Swiss team achieves 42% efficiency in photoelectrochemical H2 production

A team at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, has achieved a 42 percent efficiency rate when splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen with light energy. They have developed a dye-sensitized photoelectrochemical cell that originally developed 7-8 percent efficiency in simulated solar light and 12 percent in diffuse sunlight. Their work was originally published in Nature in 1991. Since then they have further developed the structure of the cells which are made up of silicon and iron-oxide (more commonly known as rust) and they have dramatically improved the efficiency. The cell is made up of a layer of silicon and an layer of cobalt deposited on a film of iron-oxide. The teams most recent work is being published in the December 13 issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
[Source: Journal of the American Chemical Society via GreenCarCongress]