Technology

In the electrolysis process, electricity passed between two electrodes immersed in a water and salt electrolyte dissociates the water into pure hydrogen and oxygen.  Commercial electrolyzers require expensive distilled water, and of course electricity.

Replacing one of the electrodes with a photoactive semiconductor such as titania produces hydrogen directly when illuminated with sunlight. This process is known as photolysis, and the device is photoelectrochemical (PEC). Sunlight produces electron-hole charge pairs in the titania that break water (H₂O) into hydrogen and oxygen in a reduction-oxidation, or redox, reaction.  However, the lifetime and efficiency of PEC technology to date are not commercially viable, and production is either too expensive or is not scalable.                          .                                            

 

 

Nanoptek has developed a titania photoelectrode that is low cost, has a long lifetime, and higher efficiency in converting sunlight into hydrogen.  Nanoptek has developed a way to use nano-structures (as shown in our logo) to cause large local nano-scale stresses in the titania.  This stretches the titania crystal lattice so that electrons are held less tightly in the lattice and so can be knocked out of the titania with light of lower energy, meaning visible.  These electrons then drive the hydrogen production. This is known as “bandgap engineering” and causes Nanoptek’s titania photocatalyst to be photoactive well into the visible blue, and so is 6X more efficient in sunlight than native titania, which requires the sparse ultraviolet (UV) part of the solar spectrum.

That this is achieved without dyes or doping results in an inert, robust, and long-lived product. Further, the performance of Nanoptek’s titania improves with heat, so heat from the sun can be used to further increase the efficiency of the photolysis process, and solar concentrators can be used for better economics.  Finally, the manufacturing process is scalable, low cost, and requires less energy than other processes.

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