Highly Efficient Visible Light Photocatalysis for Energy Conversion

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.