New Magnetic Core-Metal Oxide Shell Nanoparticles for Photocatalytic Water-Splitting

在这个DPhil项目期间，研究将集中在利用阳光和水生产氢燃料的新技术的设计上。该项目属于ESPRC能源研究领域。全球变暖导致的极端天气已经造成了人道主义危机。由于严重干旱，尼日尔人民正在努力阻止他们的土地变成不适宜居住的沙漠；马达加斯加在短短一个月内(2022年2月)经历了四次大风暴，“摧毁了这个岛国”；海洋变暖威胁到所有居民，因此威胁到依赖海洋及其海岸食物的30亿人的生活。众所周知，全球变暖的一个主要原因是大气中二氧化碳(CO2)水平的上升。二氧化碳是一种温室气体，可以阻挡热量，防止热量从地球逃逸到太空。燃烧化石燃料(如汽油、柴油和煤炭)释放的二氧化碳排放是大气水平上升的重要原因。这突显了为什么对化石燃料的绿色替代品有很大的需求。氢气(H2)是一种现实的绿色替代燃料。氢气燃料的排放物非常清洁且无碳；燃烧时，氢气与氧气反应只产生水。此外，与任何化石燃料相比，燃烧H2时释放的能量明显更多。在H2能够取代化石燃料之前，需要克服一些技术挑战。这些挑战之一是以无碳和可持续的方式生产氢气。一种前景看好的解决方案被称为太阳能催化裂水(SCWS)，它使用专门设计的技术从阳光和水中产生氢气。这项技术具有令人难以置信的可持续性。它利用了人类可用的两种最丰富的资源--太阳和海洋。由于氢气发电效率低，SCWS技术目前在商业上不可行。当SCWS系统吸收阳光时，它们将太阳能转化为有用的反应能和不太有用的热能。反应能将水转化为氢气。目前的超临界水蒸气技术效率较低，因为它们将太多的阳光转化为热能，而不是足够的反应能。本项目的研究将集中在设计新的、更高效的超临界水蒸气技术，通过将更高比例的吸收的太阳能转化为有用的反应能来产生氢气，从而更有效地利用阳光。本研究的方法是利用当前各种SCWS系统的已知优势设计特点，并将它们组合成一个高效的SCWS系统。在这一过程中还可能发现新的有利特征。主要的挑战将是弄清楚如何制造新的系统，因为这种化学反应可能是棘手和不可预测的。通过这项研究以及该领域其他科学家的研究成果，希望有一天，SCWS技术将被用于在任何有水和阳光可用的地方可持续地生产氢气燃料。

During this DPhil project, research will focus on the design of novel technologies that use sunlight and water to produce hydrogen fuel. This project falls within the ESPRC Energy research area.The extreme weather caused by global warming is already creating humanitarian crisis. Due to severe droughts, people in Niger are fighting to stop their land turning into an inhospitable desert; Madagascar has seen four major storms in just one month (February 2022) that have "wrecked the island nation"; warming of the oceans threatens all its inhabitants and consequently, the lives of 3 billion people that depend on the food from the ocean and its coasts. As is commonly known, a major cause of global warming is rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere. CO2 is a greenhouse gas which traps heat, preventing its escape from Earth into space. CO2 emissions released from burning of fossils fuels, such as petrol, diesel, and coal, are significantly contributing to the rising atmospheric levels. This highlights why there is a great need for green alternatives to fossil fuels. Hydrogen (H2) is a realistic alternative green fuel. The emissions of H2 fuel are very clean and carbon-free; when burnt, H2 reacts with oxygen to produce only water. Further, gram for gram, significantly more energy is released when burning H2 compared to any fossil fuel.Before H2 can replace fossil fuels, a few technological challenges need overcoming. One of these challenges is producing H2 in a carbon-free and sustainable way. A promising solution, known as solar-catalytic water-splitting (SCWS), uses specifically designed technology to generate H2 from sunlight and water. This technology is incredibly sustainable. It uses two of the most abundant resources available to mankind - the sun and the sea. Due to low H2-generation efficiencies, SCWS technology is not currently commercially-viable. When SCWS systems absorb sunlight, they convert the solar energy into useful reaction energy and much-less-useful heat energy. The reaction energy converts water to H2. Current SCWS technologies have low efficiencies because they convert too much of the sunlight into heat energy and not enough into reaction energy.The research in this project will focus on designing new, more efficient SCWS technology that can use sunlight more effectively by converting a higher proportion of the absorbed solar energy into useful reaction energy for H2 generation. The approach of this research is to use known advantageous design features of various current SCWS systems and combine them into one highly efficient SCWS system. New advantageous features may also be discovered in this process. The main challenge will be figuring out how to make the new systems as this chemistry can be tricky and unpredictable. Through contributions from this research and from research by other scientists in the field, hopefully one day, SCWS technology will be used to sustainably generate H2 fuel anywhere that water and sunlight are available.