Communications of the ACM
Solar Paint Turns Water Vapor Into Hydrogen Fuel
Researchers Kourosh Kalantar-zadeh (left) and Torben Daeneke hold samples of a hydrogen-producing paint.
Credit: RMIT
Researchers have developed a solar paint that can absorb water vapor and split it to generate hydrogen — the cleanest source of energy.
The paint contains a newly developed compound that acts like silica gel, which is used in sachets to absorb moisture and keep food, medicines, and electronics fresh and dry.
But unlike silica gel, the new material, synthetic molybdenum-sulphide, also acts as a semiconductor and catalyzes the splitting of water atoms into hydrogen and oxygen.
RMIT lead researcher Torben Daeneke says: "We found that mixing the compound with titanium oxide particles leads to a sunlight-absorbing paint that produces hydrogen fuel from solar energy and moist air.
"Titanium oxide is the white pigment that is already commonly used in wall paint, meaning that the simple addition of the new material can convert a brick wall into energy harvesting and fuel production real estate," he says.
He development has a range of advantages, Daeneke says. "There's no need for clean or filtered water to feed the system. Any place that has water vapor in the air, even remote areas far from water, can produce fuel," he says.
His colleague, Distinguished Professor Kourosh Kalantar-zadeh, says hydrogen is the cleanest source of energy and could be used in fuel cells as well as conventional combustion engines as an alternative to fossil fuels.
"This system can also be used in very dry but hot climates near oceans," he says. "The sea water is evaporated by the hot sunlight and the vapor can then be absorbed to produce fuel.
"This is an extraordinary concept — making fuel from the sun and water vapor in the air," Kalantar-zedeh says.
The research has been published as "Surface Water Dependent Properties of Sulfur Rich Molybdenum Sulphides: Electrolyteless Gas Phase Water Splitting" in the journal ACS Nano. The article is authored by Torben Daeneke, Nripen Dahr, Paul Atkin, Rhiannon M. Clark, Christopher J. Harrison, Robert Brkljača, Naresh Pillai, Bao Yue Zhang, Ali Zavabeti, Samuel J. Ippolito, Kyle J. Berean, Jian Zhen Ou, Michael S. Strano, and Kourosh Kalantar-zadeh.
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