November 21, 2012

SBU-Led Research Reveals Nanotechnology Simplifies Hydrogen Production for Clean Energy




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.