New catalyst promotes artificial photosynthesis

Scientists have created an oxygen-evolution catalyst that combines with semiconductors for solar water splitting, an advance that assists the conversion of solar energy to chemical energy in the form of hydrogen and oxygen.

The discovery was made in the lab of Kenton Whitmire, a Rice University professor of chemistry, with assistance from researchers at the University of Houston.

They found that growing a layer of an active catalyst directly on the surface of a light-absorbing nanorod array produced an artificial photosynthesis material that could split water at the full theoretical potential of the light-absorbing semiconductor with sunlight.

Finding a clean renewable source of hydrogen fuel is already the focus of research, but the technology is yet to be commercialised but one promising method is through an oxygen-evolution catalyst that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen.

For their research, the Rice team combined iron, manganese and phosphorus into a precursor that can be deposited directly onto any substrate without damaging it.