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Visible-light photocatalyst splits water

Sunlight-driven electrolysis of water to form O2 and H2 has been a longtime goal of inorganic photochemists, with the idea of efficiently producing hydrogen to power fuel cells. Transition-metal oxide semiconductors used as catalysts for this process generally absorb UV light, which accounts for only 4% of incoming sunlight, so the reactions aren not very efficient. Thus the greater goal has been to develop photocatalysts that absorb in the visible region, which is less energetic but accounts for about 43% of sunlight. In the latest step in that direction, AUTHORS report the solid-state synthesis of indium tantalum oxide semiconductors doped with nickel, In1–xNixTaO4 (x = 0–0.2). Nickel reduces the band-gap energy of the catalyst enough to push light absorption into the visible region but maintain the 1.23 eV needed to split water. The photocatalyst efficiency is less than 1%, however, which will need to be improved considerably to make the process practical.




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