Dresden 2014 – scientific programme

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MM: Fachverband Metall- und Materialphysik

MM 7: Energy materials: Water splitting, batteries, and supercapacitors (HL with MM/CPP)

MM 7.1: Talk

Monday, March 31, 2014, 10:45–11:00, POT 081

Highly efficient photocatalytic water splitting with colloidal CdS nanorods by mediated hole scavenging — •Thomas Simon, Aurora Manzi, Christian Wolff, Jacek Stolarczyk, and Jochen Feldmann — Photonics and Optoelectronics Group, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Muenchen, Amalienstr. 54, D-80799

Solar hydrogen production is considered to be as one of the biggest challenges for future energy supply. Colloidal semiconductor nanoparticles, as sunlight absorber with additional noble metal nanoparticles as hydrogen catalyst are well known for photocatalytic hydrogen generation. Many of these systems suffer from low solar to hydrogen efficiencies unless high cost and rare materials like platinum or ruthenium compounds are used as co-catalysts. We demonstrate that it is possible to overcome all these problems with CdS nanorods with a very simple earth-abundant nickel-based co-catalyst. An apparent quantum yield exceeding 50% and long term stability of more than 200h could be achieved. We show that the photocatalytic activity is enhanced ten-fold in highly alkaline environment. Thanks to favourable band alignment the hydroxide anion acts as a redox shuttle relaying the hole from the nanocrystals. Since the hole transfer is considered to be the limiting factor, the quick hole scavenging at high pH is responsible for the enhancement of photocatalytic hydrogen evolution. [1]

[1] T. Simon, M.J. Berr, A. Vaneski, D. Volbers, R. Wyrwich, M. Döblinger, A.S. Susha, A.L. Rogach, F. Jäckel, J.K. Stolarczyk, J. Feldmann, submitted