[font face=Serif]Public Release: 16-Jun-2015
[font size=5]Hematite 're-growth' smoothes rough edges for clean energy harvest[/font]
[font size=4]Team reports first 'unassisted' water splitting using only hematite and silicon as solar absorbers[/font]

Boston College

[font size=3]Chestnut Hill, Mass., June 16 -- Finding an efficient solar water splitting method to mine electron-rich hydrogen for clean power has been thwarted by the poor performance of hematite. But by 're-growing' the mineral's surface, a smoother version of hematite doubled electrical yield, opening a new door to energy-harvesting artificial photosynthesis, according to a report published online today in the journal Nature Communications.

Re-grown hematite proved to be a better power generating anode, producing a record low turn-on voltage that enabled the researchers to be the first to use earth-abundant hematite and silicon as the sole light absorbers in artificial photosynthesis, said Boston College associate professor of chemistry Dunwei Wang, a lead author of the report.

The new hydrogen harvesting process achieved an overall efficiency of 0.91 percent, a 'modest' mark in and of itself, but the first 'meaningful efficiency ever measured by hematite and amorphous silicon, two of the most abundant elements on Earth,' the team reported.

'By simply smoothing the surface characteristics of hematite, this close cousin of rust can be improved to couple with silicon, which is derived from sand, to achieve complete water splitting for solar hydrogen generation,' said Wang, whose research focuses on discovering new methods to generate clean energy. 'This unassisted water splitting, which is very rare, does not require expensive or scarce resources.'

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