GEN-ERIC News

Using sunlight to liberate hydrogen from water is an appealing way to generate a clean-burning fuel from a renewable energy source. As a result, scientists have examined a variety of materials over the years in search of a suitable catalyst to accelerate the water-splitting reaction. Several candidates show some level of promise, yet each material suffers from shortcomings that would limit its applications. For example, some catalysts absorb solar radiation inefficiently, exhibit low activity, or are unstable or costly. Now, a team of researchers at the Max Planck Institutes for Bioinorganic Chemistry and for Coal Research, in Germany, report that titanium disilicide (TiSi2)—an abundant and inexpensive semiconductor not known previously to be a water-splitting catalyst—separates water into hydrogen and oxygen when reactors containing the powdered catalyst are illuminated with simulated sunlight.