Produce hydrogen from visible light
Power is something that is very much required in all spheres of life; in offices, homes, schools and malls. However the present stock of natural energy the earth has and provides is getting exhausted by the minute. This is the reason researchers and scientists from all over the world are constantly on the lookout for new and the latest sources of renewable energy.
Producing hydrogen from natural gas is a process that has been around for some time. However the process of producing hydrogen from natural gas tends to produce lots of climate changing greenhouse gases. In the process, a nonrenewable resource too is consumed, thus running against the actual intention of the procedure.
This is why a new and more environmentally friendly approach has been found out where hydrogen is produced from water, with the help of the renewable source of energy, sunlight.
Recent studies have shown that researchers have found out that by the fabrication of thin films of self-aligned and vertically oriented titanium iron oxide nanotube arrays tend to show the ability and possibility of splitting water in the presence of natural sunlight.
These same researchers had previously reported the creation of Titania nanotube arrays in the presence of photo conversion efficiency of 16.5%, in the presence of ultraviolet light.
The choice of titanium oxide in the creation of long lasting solar cells is that titanium oxide is a compound that is usually used in the manufacture of white paints and sunscreens. The reason it is used in sunscreens is its excellent charge-transfer properties and corrosion stability. All these features made titanium oxide the right candidate for producing both cheap, and long lasting solar cells.
The only drawback here for using titanium oxide in producing solar energy lies in the fact that ultraviolet light has only about 5% of the solar spectrum energy. With this drawback, the researchers had to find an alternate means of moving the materials band gap into the visible spectrum.
This is why the researchers speculated trying to dope the TiO2 film with hematite, a form of iron and a low band gap semiconductor material. This was done with the intention of capturing larger portions of the solar spectrum. Then the researchers created Ti-Fe metal films with the help of sputtered titanium and iron targets placed on fluorine-doped tin oxide coated glass substrates.
Ethylene glycol solution was then used to anodize these films, to be crystallized with oxygen annealing for 2 hours.
With this done, the researchers compared the films of differing thicknesses and varied iron content and decided that a photocurrent of 2mA/cm2 and a photo conversion rate of 1.5% was achieved.
This was in fact, the second highest rate that has been achieved using iron oxide related materials.
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Think Solar Energy
I didn’t know about this – very informative post. I am sure I will be back to read more interesting articles.