Photocatalysts：Closingthegap.pdf

news views PHOTOCATALYSTS Closing the gap Photocatalysts such as titanium dioxide that use sunlight to split water and produce hydrogen would be a clean and sustainable solution to many problems, but their efficiency is currently too low to be widely used. Two approaches to engineer the surface properties of titanium dioxide offer hope that its efficiency can be increased. Ulrike Diebold magine you throw a little bit of some Often, trap sites are introduced that act as This would close the gap to effectively ~2.1 eV, miraculous stuff into a bucket of water, recombination centres for the photoexcited pushing the optical absorption edge into hold it in bright sunlight, and out bubbles charge carriers. When the electrons and the visible (590 nm), and achieving the goal I hydrogen. Suppose further that you use this holes meet they annihilate and create heat; of harvesting a larger fraction of the solar hydrogen to fill up your (fuel-cell-powered) sometimes increased recombination can spectrum. In addition, upwards band-bending car, which spits out only water from the render the doped material less efficient that was observed, which should drive photo- exhaust pipe when you drive it. This would the undoped one. excited holes to the surface, where they could certainly solve our looming environmental To design a better photcatalyst, it is critical be available for oxidation reactions. and energy problems, wouldn’t it? to identify the nature of such bandgap states, The combination of experimental