Electric Field Effects on Photoelectrochemical Water Splitting: Perspectives and Outlook

Stephanie J. Boyd, Run Long and Niall J. English
Additional contact information
Stephanie J. Boyd: School of Chemical and Bioprocess Engineering, University College Dublin, D04 V1W8 Dublin, Ireland
Run Long: School of Chemistry, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Niall J. English: School of Chemical and Bioprocess Engineering, University College Dublin, D04 V1W8 Dublin, Ireland

Energies, 2022, vol. 15, issue 4, 1-16

Abstract: The grand challenges in renewable energy lie in our ability to comprehend efficient energy conversion systems, together with dealing with the problem of intermittency via scalable energy storage systems. Relatively little progress has been made on this at grid scale and two overriding challenges still need to be addressed: (i) limiting damage to the environment and (ii) the question of environmentally friendly energy conversion. The present review focuses on a novel route for producing hydrogen, the ultimate clean fuel, from the Sun, and renewable energy source. Hydrogen can be produced by light-driven photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting, but it is very inefficient; rather, we focus here on how electric fields can be applied to metal oxide/water systems in tailoring the interplay with their intrinsic electric fields, and in how this can alter and boost PEC activity, drawing both on experiment and non-equilibrium molecular simulation.

Keywords: photoelectrochemical water splitting; electric fields; molecular simulation; hydrogen (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/4/1553/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/4/1553/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:15:y:2022:i:4:p:1553-:d:753593

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().