In China, scientists have developed a new material which can use sunlight to turn water into hydrogen fuel more efficiently, called a coumarin-linked COF.
It’s a small, porous structure, specifically created to help the reactions needed to produce hydrogen, as when sunlight hits a material like this, it creates electrons and holes that need to move around, which then drives the reaction that splits water into hydrogen.
The old issue, now solved with this material, was that the electrons and holes can come back together very quickly, wasting energy from the sunlight. The researches added a rigid part to the material, which doesn’t move around as much, meaning the electrons can move through the structure easier and are less likely to waste their energy.
“This work provides a facile and effective strategy for tuning charge dynamics in conjugated COFs via linkage engineering,” said Professor Zhang Tao of NIMTE, a corresponding author of the study. “It sheds light on the design and application of high-performance organic photocatalysts for solar hydrogen production.”
Researchers found that the charges lasted around 1000x longer than in a similar material without the linkages – proving the efficiency and paving the way forwards in efficient hydrogen production.
