Stanford researchers find new way of making hydrogen fuel from water and improve grid-scale batteri…
http://news.stanford.edu/2016/06/17/stanford-researchers-find-new-way-making-hydrogen-fuel-water-improve-grid-scale-batteries/[font face=Serif][font size=5]Stanford researchers find new way of making hydrogen fuel from water and improve grid-scale batteries[/font]
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Stanford engineer Yi Cui and colleagues have developed new ways to improve hydrogen production and rechargeable zinc batteries.[/font]
By Mark Shwartz
[font size=3]A Stanford University research lab has developed new technologies to tackle two of the worlds biggest energy challenges clean fuel for transportation and grid-scale energy storage.
The researchers described their findings in two studies published this month in the journals
Science Advances and
Nature Communications.
[font size=1]Stanford engineers created arrays of silicon nanocones to trap sunlight and improve the performance of solar cells made of bismuth vanadate
(1µm=1,000 nanometers).
(Image credit: Wei Chen and Yongcai Qiu)[/font]
In the experiment, Cui and his colleagues deposited the nanocone arrays on a thin film of bismuth vanadate. Both layers were then placed on a solar cell made of perovskite, another promising photovoltaic material.
When submerged, the three-layer tandem device immediately began splitting water at a solar-to-hydrogen conversion efficiency of 6.2 percent, already matching the theoretical maximum rate for a bismuth vanadate cell.
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