Nanostructuring Materials for Solar-to-Hydrogen Conversion

Nanostructuring provides unprecedented opportunities for altering and tuning materials properties, including the capability of modifying band gap, aligning band edges, accessing metastable phases, designing new structures, spatially and temporally reconciling charge separation and extraction processes, and engineering catalytic surfaces and structures with increased population of active sites, all of which are cross-cutting issues for energy conversion and storage. Of particular interest to research activities at the DOE-EFRC Center on Nanostructuring for Efficient Energy Conversion (CNEEC) based at Stanford University and featured in this article is advancing the fundamental building blocks for photoelectrochemical conversion of solar energy into hydrogen via the splitting of water. The paper discusses the basic concepts as well as challenges in photoelectrochemical conversion and presents selective highlights of recent progress made at CNEEC in the fundamental understanding of the role of nanostructuring on photoabsorption and catalysis toward solar-to-fuels conversion.