Description
The growing demand for energy will be a critical issue until we find a renewable and sustainable energy source that can replace our present predominate sources based on fossil fuels. Moreover, our dependency on fossil fuels has contributed to accelerated climate change throughout the planet. Therefore, it is necessary for any energy replacement system to have a minimal environmental impact. Currently, research is focused on developing catalytic systems that potentially will lead to a renewable sustainable energy ecosystem in the form of solar fuels, a process involving the conversion of water (H2O) into hydrogen(H2) or CO2 into useful fuels, utilizing solar energy. At present, the most efficient catalytic systems used for solar fuel conversion rely on precious earth metals such as platinum, which are expensive and scarce, making them unsuitable for commercialization standards. Herein, our research focuses on the development of a novel heterogenous vanadium sulfide catalyst film that is prepared via a cost-effective electrodeposition method on a conductive glass surface. Also, a heterogenous niobium sulfide catalyst on the surface of a silicon wafer was synthesized and characterized. Both systems were designed for implementation as heterogenous catalysis, facilitating the conversion of water into hydrogen, known as the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) on semiconductors. Furthermore, we began preliminary studies in a collaboration project with one of our designed photoelectrochemical electrodes for use in a methane bio-reformer system for biological fuel production in the form of methanol (CH3OH) and hydrogen gas. The presence and characterization of both sulfide catalysts have been confirmed using various techniques such as, SEM, XPS, GC, and EDX. In the future, these cost-effective designed catalysts might be viable tools for solar fuel conversion and hydrogen gas production on an industrialized scale.
