The global energy demand is expected to double by the year 2050. Among the various sources of alternate energy, solar energy seems to be an attractive option. Solar energy is a carbon neutral, non-polluting, and renewable source of energy. Solar energy can be used to produce electricity or fuels (hydrogen and oxygen). In particular, the overall splitting of water (to produce both hydrogen and oxygen) using visible light photocatalysts has long been claimed to a holy grail in the field of chemistry. Several semiconductors have been developed towards this purpose, however despite intense research, they suffer from poor quantum efficiencies. Furthermore, the development of stable and robust visible light absorbing photocatalysts seems to be a bigger challenge.Our research efforts are directed towards using periodic mesoporous materials as supports to disperse photocatalytically active semiconductors and provide effective diffusion of water molecules to the photoactive sites. In particular, we make use of the unique pore geometry available in cubic MCM-48 mesoporous materials. MCM-48 possesses a three-dimension inter-connected network of pores with gyroidal pore geometry. In addition, MCM-48 mesoporous materials also have high surface areas, tunable pore sizes, and large pore volumes. Our results show that the cubic MCM-48 materials are better supports compared to one-dimensional supports such as MCM-41. Our research has demonstrated that titanium dioxide and CdS quantum dots can be well-dispersed within the MCM-48 mesoporous matrix. By deposition of RuO2 onto the CdS-Ti-MCM-48 photocatalyst, photocorrosion can be completely suppressed. The photocatalyst, RuO2-CdS-Ti-MCM-48 is the first known visible light photocatalyst capable of overall water splitting.

Design of an artificial leaf using periodic mesoporous materials: An ENFL story

248th National Meeting (2014)

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