EMIL
Solar Fuels
Solar fuel is produced from sunlight by solar energy being transformed into chemical energy. Main solar fuels are hydrogen produced by water splitting or products from CO2 reduction such as CO and methane (CH4). The production of solar fuel requires catalytic processes. In this context water electrolysis is a very important reaction. Presently, industrial water splitting is based on noble metal electrodes. The abundance of these expensive metals on our planet is limited, but their replacement by other materials requires a deep knowledge of the reactions, which occur at the electrodes during water electrolysis.
Highlighted topics:
- Oxygen evolution reaction (OER)
- Combinatorial libraries of semiconductor oxides for photoelectrodes
- In-situ monitoring of oxygen vacancies in doped metal oxides
- In-situ monitoring of photocatalytic reactions in solution