Materials for solar fuels and chemicals

Abstract

The conversion of sunlight into fuels and chemicals is an attractive prospect for the storage of renewable energy, and photoelectrocatalytic technologies represent a pathway by which solar fuels might be realized. However, there are numerous scientific challenges in developing these technologies. These include finding suitable materials for the absorption of incident photons, developing more efficient catalysts for both water splitting and the production of fuels, and understanding how interfaces between catalysts, photoabsorbers and electrolytes can be designed to minimize losses and resist degradation. In this Review, we highlight recent milestones in these areas and some key scientific challenges remaining between the current state of the art and a technology that can effectively convert sunlight into fuels and chemicals.

Cobalt Nanoparticles/Black Phosphorus Nanosheets: An Efficient Catalyst for Electrochemical Oxygen Evolution

“…Electrochemical water splitting is considered as a prospective solution to provide clean and sustainable energy storage instead of fossil fuels such as coal, petroleum, and natural gas 1. However, the half‐cell reaction in water splitting, oxygen evolution reaction (OER) via a four electron‐transfer reaction of 4OH − →2H 2 O+O 2 +4e − , demands for a high overpotential to overcome the kinetic barrier to achieve the desired current density.…”

Review—Promises and Challenges of In Situ Transmission Electron Microscopy Electrochemical Techniques in the Studies of Lithium Ion Batteries

“…[1][2][3] These issues, as well as the foreseeable worldwide energy shortage, strongly demand renewable alternative sources and clean energy such as solar cells, hydroelectric power, and wind energy, which require advances in electrical energy conversion and storage technologies. [4][5][6] Electrochemical devices such as batteries and electrochemical capacitors to store and restore electrical energy are possible solutions in the near-term because the conversion between electrical and chemical energy shares a common carrier (electrons). 2,[7][8][9] Moreover, compared to traditional batteries, lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are more compact, portable, and have a high gravimetric capacity and power density, owing to the lighter molecular weight of lithium.…”

Cover Feature: Mechanistic Parameters of Electrocatalytic Water Oxidation on LiMn2O4 in Comparison to Natural Photosynthesis (ChemSusChem 22/2017)

“…The best currently known electrocatalysts for the OER suffer from overpotentials around 0.3 Vh ighert han the thermodynamic limit, [6] which is very large as it equals,f or example, the span between thel east and most active perovskite oxides. [7] Property-activity relationships have proven ap romising approachi n the search for more active catalysts based on earth-abundant materials.…”

“…[6,[13][14][15][16][17][18] The structure of the active site is known with high resolution [8,9,19] and furthermore,t he active states have been studied for decades by various experimental and theoretical methods. [2,[10][11][12][20][21][22][23] The mechanism of water oxidation in natural photosynthesis is the so-called S-statec ycle or Kok cycle [24] (Figure 1).…”