Electrochemical and photoelectrochemical water splitting to generate hydrogen

Abstract

Generation of Hydrogen as clean and green fuel by splitting water is one of the important aspects of mitigating the overuse of non-renewabale sources of energy and its associated environmental degredation. Since the time when water was predictably forseen as the coal of future there has been many scientific efforts to reduce water and produce hydrogen which is struggingly uphill task in comparison to the other alternatives like steam reforming process (presently holding 96% of the world’s hydrogen production). These efforts include using sunlight as the major energy source: Photochemical, Photoelectrochemical and PV-Electrolyzers. All these methods utilize energy from sun to generate charge carriers which if prevented from recombination results in successful utilization in redox reaction to produce hydrogen and oxygen from water or generating required elecytrical enerrgy for electrolysis. For this to achieve in an economical way, inexpensive novel materials which can reduce/oxidize water is required.