Repost from Clean Technica | May 17, 2013
Call it artificial leaf? It is more of photoelectrochemical cell (PEC) to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. You dunk a leaf into water to make a fuel cell.
The problem here is the water because impure water can cause deposition of minerals on the device and or corrode the same.
The study comes from the National Institute of Science and Technology. The device is called a silicon based PEC. There is a layer of silicon dioxide on the semiconductor. The top array consist of electrodes of titanium coated with platinum.
Light passes through the silicon dioxide, and photons tunnel in opposite direction to reach the electrodes which catalyzes the electrode to split water into oxygen and hydrogen. The efficiency is 2.9% which may not sound much but is 15x better than next silicon design.
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