Maybe hydrogen power is a way to go! However, handling hydrogen is dangerous and what to do with water vapor or water pollution if hydrogen power is applied at a very large scale (e.g. supplying 1-3 billion people with energy). Possibly, the water could be used a potable water.
"... The device is known as a photoelectrochemical cell because the absorption of light, its conversion into electricity and the use of the electricity to power a chemical reaction all occur in the same device. Until now, using photoelectrochemical technology to produce green hydrogen was hampered by low efficiencies and the high cost of semiconductors. ...
The challenge they had to overcome was that halide perovskites are extremely unstable in water and coatings used to insulate the semiconductors ended up either disrupting their function or damaging them. ...
“Our key insight was that you needed two layers to the barrier, one to block the water and one to make good electrical contact between the perovskite layers and the protective layer,” ..."
The challenge they had to overcome was that halide perovskites are extremely unstable in water and coatings used to insulate the semiconductors ended up either disrupting their function or damaging them. ...
“Our key insight was that you needed two layers to the barrier, one to block the water and one to make good electrical contact between the perovskite layers and the protective layer,” ..."
From the abstract:
"Achieving high solar-to-hydrogen (STH) efficiency concomitant with long-term durability using low-cost, scalable photo-absorbers is a long-standing challenge. Here we report the design and fabrication of a conductive adhesive-barrier (CAB) that translates >99% of photoelectric power to chemical reactions. The CAB enables halide perovskite-based photoelectrochemical cells with two different architectures that exhibit record STH efficiencies. The first, a co-planar photocathode-photoanode architecture, achieved an STH efficiency of 13.4% and 16.3 h to t60, solely limited by the hygroscopic hole transport layer in the n-i-p device. The second was formed using a monolithic stacked silicon-perovskite tandem, with a peak STH efficiency of 20.8% and 102 h of continuous operation before t60 under AM 1.5G illumination. These advances will lead to efficient, durable, and low-cost solar-driven water-splitting technology with multifunctional barriers."
Device makes hydrogen from sunlight with record efficiency (primary news source) New standard for green hydrogen technology set by Rice U. engineers
Integrated halide perovskite photoelectrochemical cells with solar-driven water-splitting efficiency of 20.8% (open access)
Fig. 2: CAB (conductive adhesive-barrier) design for near-perfect preservation of photovoltaic efficiency.
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