SOLAR: High-Efficiency Solar Generation of Hydrogen Fuel from Novel "Tuned" Electrocatalytic Nanostructures

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This award on solar energy research is co-funded by the Divisions of Chemistry, Materials Research, and Mathematical Sciences of the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences. The team of three scientists from the University of Texas at Austin is focused on the design, development, fabrication, testing, and understanding, (through mathematical modeling) of performance characteristics of nanostructured, semiconducting photocatalysts for high efficiency photoelectrochemical (PEC) devices. These devices will be used for the direct conversion of solar photons into hydrogen fuel via water electrolysis. The key to the discovery of these new photocatalysts is finding new compositions and structures at the nanometer scale. A combination of computational mathematics and rapid synthesis and screening tools are used to reveal structure/function relationships. Although the modeling of PEC systems has been performed at the macroscale, the behavior changes significantly at the nanoscale and these systems have not been simulated previously. The research group prepares nanostructured PEC thin films of promising materials compositions as identified by the rapid screening techniques and refines these structures via mathematical modeling and photoelectrochemical experiments. The nanostructured films are grown using a technique referred to as reactive ballistic deposition (RBD). This technique enables the tuning of photocatalytic and optical properties for high visible-light activity. In addition to the researchers' efforts to develop alternative energy sources from water and sunlight, the group is creating streaming animated videos on energy for high school students in both English and Spanish. High school student researchers and faculty from four-year undergraduate institutions assist in the research efforts during the summer months, designing and constructing experimental apparatus and collaborating with scientists at the national laboratories and at other universities.