Photoelectrochemical Hydrogen Production
Photoelectrochemical Hydrogen Production describes the principles and materials challenges for the conversion of sunlight into hydrogen through water splitting at a semiconducting electrode. Readers will find an analysis of the solid state properties and
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Harry L. Tuller Professor of Materials Science and Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Massachusetts [email protected]
For further volumes: http://www.springer.com/series/5915
Roel van de Krol
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Michael Gra¨tzel
Editors
Photoelectrochemical Hydrogen Production
Editors Roel van de Krol Department of Chemical Engineering/ Materials for Energy Conversion and Storage Faculty of Applied Sciences Delft University of Technology P.O. Box 5045, 2600 GA Delft The Netherlands [email protected]
Michael Gra¨tzel Laboratory for Photonics and Interfaces Ecole Polytechnique Fe´de´rale de Lausanne CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland [email protected]
ISSN 1386-3290 ISBN 978-1-4614-1379-0 e-ISBN 978-1-4614-1380-6 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-1380-6 Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London Library of Congress Control Number: 2011939087 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012
All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
Preface
Hydrogen is a highly versatile fuel that may become one of the key pillars to support our future energy infrastructure. It can be efficiently converted into electricity using a fuel cell, or it can directly drive an internal combustion engine. Using hydrogen is clean; the only reaction product upon oxidation is pure water, with little or no exhaust of greenhouse gases. It can even be converted into more convenient form of fuel, a liquid hydrocarbon, using excess CO2 and well-established Fischer– Tropsch technology. However, hydrogen does not occur freely in nature, and producing hydrogen in a clean, sustainable, and economic way is a major challenge. This book is about tackling that challenge with semiconductors, using water and sunlight as the only ingredients. The ultimate aim is to make a monolithic photoelectrode that evolves hydrogen and oxygen at opposite sides of the electrode, so that they can be easily separated. Finding semiconductors that can do this efficiently, at low cost, and without suffering from corrosion is far from trivial. The emphasis in this book is on transition metal oxides, a low-cost and generally very stable class of semiconductors. There is a darker side to these materials, though. The bandgap of metal oxide semiconductors is often a bit too large, and the optical absorp
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