Material and Device Challenges in Solar Water Splitting
Dr. Fatwa Firdaus Abdi
Institute for Solar Fuels, Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin
Significant progress has been reported in solar water splitting, with solar-to-hydrogen efficiency as high as 30% already demonstrated. However, two major challenges remain. First, high efficiencies have only been achieved using expensive and non-scalable III-V semiconductors. Low-cost metal-oxide based devices, on the other hand, have only achieved efficiencies < 10%. Second, most of the demonstrated devices are still at the laboratory scale. Large-area demonstrations exist, but they typically show much lower efficiencies. In this talk, I will present our research efforts in developing novel low-cost metal oxide photoelectrodes and mitigating scale-up related losses in solar water splitting devices.
