2011 in Tech: Catalyst search continues; Gold for cheaper solar
01.01.70
A link up of researchers from the University of Kentucky and Louisville used a gallium nitride-antimony alloy ; another team from Monash University habituated to "black stain" or birnessite, a dark substance found in manganese-rich mineral deposits; while Purdue University in Indiana hand-me-down several abundant but cheap metals - aluminum, gallium, indium, and tin - to trigger water splitting.
Aside from being worthless, another good quality of a water-splitting catalyst would be its ability to react to sunlight. Sunlight can trigger an charged current that causes the catalyst to react. The gallium nitride-antimony alloy of the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisiana uses sunlight to trigger saturate splitting.
So can an "artificial leaf" developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . The artificial leaf builds on research by Professor Daniel Nocera, who has been working with deuterium oxide splitting catalysts using cobalt and phosphate since 2008.
Source: EcoSeed