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Highly Efficient Visible Light Photocatalysis for Energy Conversion
1  Department of Materials Science and Engineering Michigan Technological University

Abstract:

Intensive effort has been made to develop photocatalytic processes to convert solar energy to clean fuels. So far, however, energy conversion efficiency for the visible-light photocatalytic splitting of water to hydrogen is less than 1%. In this talk, Prof. Hu will highlight the recent findings for visible light photocatalysis in his group, including: (1) demonstrating that surface-diffuse-reflected-light can be 2 orders of magnitude more efficient than incident light for photocatalysis, (2) revealing that the inefficiency of absorbed visible light for the photocatalytic H2 production from water with a sacrificial agent is due to its kinetic limitation, (3) inventing a novel temperature-induced visible light photocatalytic H2 production from water steam with a sacrificial agent to reach a high photohydrogen yield of 497 mmol/h/gcat with a large apparent quantum efficiency (QE) of 65.7% for entire visible light range, and (4) creating an efficient catalyst system for photocatalytic CO2 reforming of methane (PCRM) with a high hydrogen yield that is 3 orders of magnitude larger than the reported values.

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