Solar photocatalytic energy conversion

• 来源期刊: 科学通报（英文版）
• 年，卷（期）: 2017,（9）
• 页码范围: 597-598
• 页数: 2页
• 语种: 英文

摘要

Development of clean and renewable energy sources is an inevitable choice of human society to address the energy shortage and environmental deterioration problems nowadays.Hydrogen has been recognized as the most ideal and clean fuel because its burning product is water without second pollution.Hydrogen is very rich of content in nature,but it mainly exists as various compound states in water,plants,natural gas,and oil,etc.Prerequisite of the use of hydrogen as a practical alternative energy is that it can be acquired on a large scale by clean,cheap,and low energy supply from the renewable sources such as water and biomass.In industry,hydrogen is currently produced mainly by reforming natural gas and electrolysis processes.The former process is not sustainable because the raw material is not renewable and not pollution-free.The later process can utilize excess solar or wind power,but it is not cost-effective.Both photocatalysis and photoelectrocatalysis are promising processes to utilize solar energy for renewable H2 production from water at room temperature.Like H2O,CO2 is also one of the final combustion products of carboncontaining organic fuels.Reduction of CO2 to organic compound is another important process of solar energy conversion because we can obtain carbon-based fuels and reduce greenhouse effect simultaneously.Since the finding of photoelectrically catalytic hydrogen production with TiO2 in 1972 [1],photocatalytically and photoelectrically catalyzed water splitting and CO2 reduction have been two keen research hotspots in solar conversion field.