Research Projects

Large-scale hydrogen production from semiconductor-based materials has been hindered by the low solar-to-hydrogen (STH) conversion efficiency of current photocatalytic materials. This is due to the narrow absorption of solar light by most semiconductor materials, their composites, and hybrids, which does not allow the target H2 evolution with STH = 10% as per the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Several efficient photocatalytic materials have been reported at lab scale with excellent H2 evolution and high apparent quantum efficiency (AQE) in a particular wavelength region of the solar spectrum. However, there is a need to move from lab scale to large-scale by utilizing this accumulated knowledge. Several photocatalytic materials have shown excellent H2 production in a limited wavelength region, but large-scale hydrogen production has been a bottleneck. To address this, a multi-material photocatalytic panel can be designed using different materials with variable working wavelengths. This proposal aims to take a bold step towards large-scale photocatalytic hydrogen production by integrating different efficient photocatalysts in a panel to fabricate a pilot-scale device to achieve a TRL 6. The selected photocatalytic materials will be synthesized and examined to ensure photocatalytic H2 evolution performance at the lab scale, then converted into prototype photocatalytic sheets and tested in the natural sunlight environment. The final product, developed using this strategy, is expected to achieve STH higher than 8% and pave the way for the commercialization of photocatalytic H2 evolution technology.