With the objective to find a solution that can address the fast decreasing deposits of fossil fuel, the researchers at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Mandi have developed new materials that can use sunlight for the production of low-cost hydrogen from water.
For a long time, platinum has been used as catalyst for photochemical water splitting, but given the cost of platinum, solar hydrogen generation has been out of practical reach. The researchers at Mandi have now developed a novel multicomponent catalyst comprising nitrogen doped zinc oxide nanorods coated with molybdenum sulphide nanosheets.
Materials in the nanometre scale, a scale that is a hundred thousand times smaller than the width of a single human hair, have high surface area-to-volume ratio, improved physical properties and tuneable electronic properties, all of which make them suitable for photocatalytic activities.
The project has been taken up in collaboration with researchers from Yogi Vemana University, Andhra Pradesh. The research was undertaken by a team lead by Dr. Venkata Krishnan, Associate Professor, School of Basic Sciences, IIT Mandi with his research scholars Dr. Suneel Kumar, Mr. Ajay Kumar, and Mr. Ashish Kumar along with Dr. M. V. Shankar and Mr. V. N. Rao of Yogi Vemana University, Andhra Pradesh.
Speaking about the significance of the research, Dr. Venkata Krishnan said, “With concerns of dwindling fossil fuel reserves and environmental issues associated with their use, there has been an impetus to develop alternative, safe fuels. Hydrogen gas, with its high energy yield and eco-friendliness has been identified as a potential energy vector that can herald a new hydrogen-based economy.”
“The catch with hydrogen economy is that the gas is now largely obtained from fossil fuels by petroleum and natural gas steam reforming processes, which does not help with the problem we set out solving – finding alternatives to fossil fuels”, said Dr. Krishnan.
“Our optimized heterostructure, made of 15 weight per cent of defect-rich molybdenum sulphide nanosheets-coated on the zinc oxide, showed the highest H evolution of 17.3 mmol h-1g-1 under solar light irradiation,” explained Dr Krishnan.
“Our work provides the facile strategy for the rational design of efficient and recyclable photocatalysts for solar-to-hydrogen fuel conversion”, said a confident Dr. Krishnan, on the future implications and potential of their findings.
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