http://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. (Phys.org) —In the wake of the sobering news that atmospheric carbon dioxide is now at its highest level in at least three million years, an important advance in the race to develop carbon-neutral renewable energy sources has been achieved. Scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have reported the first fully integrated nanosystem for artificial photosynthesis. While "artificial leaf" is the popular term for such a system, the key to this success was an "artificial forest." http://phys.org/news287931960.html Nanotechnology Thu, 16 May 2013 14:06:07 EST news287931960 University of Oregon chemists say that ultra-thin films of nickel and iron oxides made through a solution synthesis process are promising catalysts to combine with semiconductors to make devices that capture sunlight and convert water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. http://phys.org/news282995761.html Chemistry Wed, 20 Mar 2013 10:56:44 EST news282995761 A research group headed by Dr. Naoto Umezawa, a Senior Researcher at the NIMS International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (MANA), succeeded in theoretical design of a photocatalyst that enables hydrogen production by water splitting using sunlight. http://phys.org/news279361511.html Chemistry Wed, 06 Feb 2013 08:25:17 EST news279361511 (Phys.org)—Last spring University of Delaware doctoral candidate Erik Koepf and research associate Michael Giuliano spent two months in Switzerland testing a novel solar reactor Koepf developed to produce hydrogen from sunlight. http://phys.org/news279276432.html Technology Tue, 05 Feb 2013 08:48:05 EST news279276432 (Phys.org)—Although scientists know that when silicon mixes with water, hydrogen is produced through oxidation, no one expected how quickly silicon nanoparticles might perform this task. As a new study has revealed, 10-nm silicon nanoparticles can generate hydrogen 150 times faster than 100-nm silicon nanoparticles, and 1,000 times faster than bulk silicon. The discovery could pave the way toward rapid "just add water" hydrogen generation technologies for portable devices without the need for light, heat, or electricity. http://phys.org/news278228854.html Nanotechnology Thu, 24 Jan 2013 09:00:01 EST news278228854 (Phys.org)—In the first-ever experiment of its kind, researchers have demonstrated that clean energy hydrogen can be produced from water splitting by using very small metal particles that are exposed to sunlight. In the article, "Outstanding activity of sub-nm Au clusters for photocatalytic hydrogen production," published in the journal Applied Catalysis B: Environmental,  Alexander Orlov, PhD, an Assistant Professor of Materials Science & Engineering at Stony Brook University, and his colleagues from Stony Brook and Brookhaven National Laboratory, found that the use of gold particles smaller than one nanometer resulted in greater hydrogen production than other co-catalysts tested. http://phys.org/news272709348.html Chemistry Wed, 21 Nov 2012 09:20:04 EST news272709348 (Phys.org)—Research at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory demonstrates that ultrashort, ultrabright X-ray laser pulses can reveal details of chemically important molecules at room temperature and in their natural state. The technique could aid studies of photosynthesis and industrial catalysts, and opens the door to development of other analytic tools at SLAC's Linac Coherent Light Source. http://phys.org/news271410771.html Physics Tue, 06 Nov 2012 08:00:02 EST news271410771 Ultra-thin inorganic oxide films are set to play vital roles in future catalytic systems, according to findings from Jaehoon Jung and Yousoo Kim at RIKEN's Advanced Science Institute in Wako and two colleagues in Japan and Korea. Through high-level computer simulations, the team discovered that small amounts of impurity atoms, or dopants, in ultra-thin oxides can systematically lower chemical reaction barriers—giving chemists a new tool for optimizing catalytic processes such as hydrogen-fuel generation. http://phys.org/news270981737.html Chemistry Thu, 01 Nov 2012 09:42:39 EST news270981737 Hydrogen production by solar water splitting in photoelectrochemical cells (PEC) has long been considered the holy grail of sustainable energy research. Iron oxide is a promising electrode material. An international team of researchers led by Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, have now gained in-depth insights into the electronic structure of an iron oxide electrode – while it was in operation. This opens up new possibilities for an affordable hydrogen production from solar energy. http://phys.org/news270724468.html Space & Earth Mon, 29 Oct 2012 11:00:07 EST news270724468 It has long been a dream of scientists to use solar energy to produce chemicals which could be stored and later used to create electricity or fuels. http://phys.org/news270198374.html Chemistry Tue, 23 Oct 2012 08:06:37 EST news270198374 (Phys.org)—Hydrogen gas that is created using solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen has the potential to be a cost-effective fuel source if the efficiency of the catalysts used in the water-splitting process can be improved. By controlling the placement of key additives (dopant atoms) in an iron oxide catalyst, researchers from the NIST Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology have found that the final location of the dopants and the temperature at which they are incorporated into the catalyst crystal lattice determine overall catalytic performance in splitting water. http://phys.org/news268557350.html Chemistry Thu, 04 Oct 2012 09:00:01 EST news268557350 Partnerships can pay off when it comes to converting solar into chemical energy. By modeling a cadmium sulfide (CdS)–zinc sulfide (ZnS) alloy with special computational techniques, a Singapore-based research team has identified the key photocatalytic properties that enable this chemical duo to 'split' water molecules into a fuel, hydrogen gas (H2). The theoretical study was published by Jianwei Zheng from the A*STAR Institute of High Performance Computing and his co-workers. http://phys.org/news267875291.html Chemistry Wed, 26 Sep 2012 11:10:01 EST news267875291 Oxygenic photosynthetic organisms utilize energy from the sun to split water into protons, electrons and oxygen—products vital to life on earth. The process takes place through light-induced electron transfer reactions in a membrane protein complex photosystem II, but so far the resolution of structural studies on the protein complex has been too limited to ascertain the mechanism of these reactions in detail. http://phys.org/news267438752.html Chemistry Fri, 21 Sep 2012 09:32:50 EST news267438752 (Phys.org)—Scientists and engineers around the world are working to find a way to power the planet using solar-powered fuel cells. Such green systems would split water during daylight hours, generating hydrogen (H2) that could then be stored and used later to produce water and electricity. But robust catalysts are needed to drive the water-splitting reaction. Platinum catalysts are quite good at this, but platinum is too rare and expensive to scale up for use worldwide. Several cobalt and nickel catalysts have been suggested as cheaper alternatives, but there is still plenty of room for improvement. And no one has been able to determine definitively the mechanism by which the cobalt catalysts work, making it difficult to methodically design and construct improved catalysts. http://phys.org/news265958366.html Chemistry Tue, 04 Sep 2012 06:19:45 EST news265958366 (Phys.org)—Scientists at the University of Cambridge have produced hydrogen, H2, a renewable energy source, from water using an inexpensive catalyst under industrially relevant conditions (using pH neutral water, surrounded by atmospheric oxygen, O2, and at room temperature). http://phys.org/news264937754.html Chemistry Thu, 23 Aug 2012 10:49:34 EST news264937754 (Phys.org) -- Providing a possible new route to hydrogen-gas production, researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have devised a series of chemical reactions that allows them, for the first time, to split water in a nontoxic, noncorrosive way, at relatively low temperatures. http://phys.org/news258180970.html Chemistry Wed, 06 Jun 2012 05:56:55 EST news258180970 Scientists from the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville have determined that an inexpensive semiconductor material can be "tweaked" to generate hydrogen from water using sunlight. http://phys.org/news233934512.html Chemistry Tue, 30 Aug 2011 14:48:51 EST news233934512 Chemists normally work rigorously to exclude impurities from their reactions. This is especially true for scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) experiments that can produce atomic-scale images of surfaces. Using STM to investigate processes such as catalysis usually requires pristine substrates—any flaws or foreign particles in the surface can critically interfere with the test study. Preconceptions about interface defects and catalysis are about to change, however, thanks to recently published research led by Yousoo Kim and Maki Kawai at the RIKEN Advanced Science Institute in Wako, Japan. http://phys.org/news228736240.html Chemistry Fri, 01 Jul 2011 10:50:55 EST news228736240 (PhysOrg.com) -- The process of splitting water into pure oxygen and clean-burning hydrogen fuel has long been the Holy Grail for clean-energy advocates as a method of large-scale energy storage, but the idea faces technical challenges. Stanford researchers may have solved one of the most important ones. http://phys.org/news227856384.html Chemistry Tue, 21 Jun 2011 06:26:45 EST news227856384 A report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy has concluded that a novel University of Colorado Boulder method of producing hydrogen fuel from sunlight is the only approach among eight competing technologies that is projected to meet future cost targets set by the federal agency. http://phys.org/news224436409.html Chemistry Thu, 12 May 2011 16:31:23 EST news224436409 At the University of Michigan College of Engineering, recent breakthroughs may lead to more effective means for harnessing the power of the sun. http://phys.org/news223716890.html Nanotechnology Wed, 04 May 2011 08:35:06 EST news223716890 (PhysOrg.com) -- Water splitting is a clean way to generate hydrogen, which is seen by many as the fuel of the future. Scientists from the Energy Technology Research Institute, AIST in Tsukuba, Japan now report in ChemSusChem on a process that uses chemical energy to generate both hydrogen and electricity. The researchers, headed by Haoshen Zhou, foresee the use of this process in fuel cells for mobile applications. http://phys.org/news193051680.html Chemistry Fri, 14 May 2010 10:28:13 EST news193051680 (PhysOrg.com) -- With one bottle of drinking water and four hours of sunlight, MIT chemist Dan Nocera claims that he can produce 30 KWh of electricity, which is enough to power an entire household in the developing world. With about three gallons of river water, he could satisfy the daily energy needs of a large American home. The key to these claims is a new, affordable catalyst that uses solar electricity to split water and generate hydrogen. http://phys.org/news187031401.html Technology Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:10:20 EST news187031401 A research project that aims to produce hydrogen on an environmentally friendly and cost-effective basis by using energy from the sun has won a prestigious E.ON research award. http://phys.org/news161870957.html Technology Mon, 18 May 2009 13:09:43 EST news161870957 The design of efficient systems for splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, driven by sunlight is among the most important challenges facing science today, underpinning the long term potential of hydrogen as a clean, sustainable fuel. But man-made systems that exist today are very inefficient and often require additional use of sacrificial chemical agents. In this context, it is important to establish new mechanisms by which water splitting can take place. http://phys.org/news158233827.html Chemistry Mon, 06 Apr 2009 10:51:51 EST news158233827