Researcher says project is first ever demonstration of the
potential of using metal nanoparticles to make fuel from water
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.