NSF DMREF UB PEC

Collaborative Research: A Blueprint for Photocatalytic Water Splitting: Mapping Multidimensional Compositional Space to Simultaneously Optimize Thermodynamics and Kinetics

Recipient University at Buffalo (PI: David Watson)

Subs Texas A&M University (PI: Sarbajit Banerjee) and Binghamton University (PI: Louis Piper)

HydroGEN Node Experts

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

• Jinghua Guo
• David Prendergast

Water Splitting Technology PEC

Status Awarded

Abstract In two generations of catalyst development within our DMREF project, we’ve arrived upon high-performance binary hetero-structured catalysts for photocatalytic water splitting. We have also separately identified active edge sites of MoS2 thought to mediate hydrogen evolution. The proposed effort with HydroGEN will rapidly accelerate our progress to commercially viable earth-abundant catalysts for hydrogen evolution by providing an additional interface to optimize. In our collaboration with HydroGEN partners, we will engineer improved hydrogen evolution by tethering MoS2 nanosheets to II-VI quantum dot solar harvesters of our rationally-designed photocatalysts. This project will combine expertise in synthesis, computational modeling, and sophisticated in-situ x-ray spectroscopy to accelerate our understanding of this promising class of ternary photocatalysts.