Single-catalyst water splitter from Stanford produces clean-burning hydrogen 24/7

Stanford scientists have developed a cheap and efficient way to extract clean-burning hydrogen fuel from water 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Stanford graduate student Haotian Wang examines the novel water splitter that he and his colleagues developed to produce clean-burning hydrogen from water 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The device, described in a study published June 23 in Nature Communications, could provide a renewable source of clean-burning hydrogen fuel for transportation and industry.

"We have developed a low-voltage, single-catalyst water splitter that continuously generates hydrogen and oxygen for more than 200 hours, an exciting world-record performance," said study co-author Yi Cui, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford and of photon science at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

In an engineering first, Cui and his colleagues used lithium-ion battery technology to create one low-cost catalyst that is capable of driving the entire water-splitting reaction. (See video.)

[link to news.stanford.edu]