Seawater to Sustainable Fuel: Sunlight-Driven Green Hydrogen Generation with an Atomically Dispersed Photocatalyst

Green hydrogen is widely regarded as a key to a sustainable future, offering a clean and flexible fuel option for decarbonizing the energy, transport, and industrial sectors. While photocatalytic approaches are known for generating hydrogen directly from water, most existing methods require (over)stoichiometric amounts of sacrificial reagents, which is far from ideal for the production of green hydrogen. To address this challenge, we have developed an atomically dispersed Ni-based photocatalyst that achieves hydrogen evolution rates of up to 270 μmol/g/h (168 mmol/g<sub>Ni</sub>/h). Remarkably, this photocatalyst also exhibits high photoreactivity under direct sunlight, producing up to 17 μmol/g/h (10.6 mmol/g<sub>Ni</sub>/h) of hydrogen. Impressively, the catalyst can even generate green hydrogen directly from seawater, up to 144 μmol/g/h, demonstrating significant potential for real-world applications. The photocatalyst is exceptionally stable, remaining active even after 720 h (140 h of irradiation and 580 h resting time) of operation and retaining high performance over more than 15 cycles. Furthermore, comprehensive spectroscopic and structural analyses─including HRTEM, PXRD, ssNMR, XPS, and XAS─provide detailed structural insights and confirm the atomically dispersed nature of the Ni species. In-depth mechanistic studies have elucidated the critical role of atomic dispersion in enabling robust photocatalytic efficiency.

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Publication Details

Journal
Journal of the American Chemical Society
Published
2025-10-22
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.5c11004
Citations
3
Primary Topic
Advanced Photocatalysis Techniques
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
1.09
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article

Seawater to Sustainable Fuel: Sunlight-Driven Green Hydrogen Generation with an Atomically Dispersed Photocatalyst

Xiufang He, Peng Ren, Piotr Kuśtrowski, Jabor Rabeah et al.
3 citations
Journal of the American Chemical Society
Advanced Photocatalysis Techniques
1.09
article

Seawater to Sustainable Fuel: Sunlight-Driven Green Hydrogen Generation with an Atomically Dispersed Photocatalyst

Xiufang He, Peng Ren, Piotr Kuśtrowski, Jabor Rabeah, Sergey Bagnich, Shoubhik Das, Anna Köhler, Paul J. Dyson, Thanh Huyen Vuong, Giovanni Barcaro, Susanna Monti, Josef Breu, Aleksander Jaworski, Anna Rokicińska, David Reyes, Gianvito Vilé, Satyadeep Waiba, Lindsey E. K. Frederiksen, Manami Banerjee, Daniel Hohenberger, Kaan Karaca
article en
3 citations

Abstract

Green hydrogen is widely regarded as a key to a sustainable future, offering a clean and flexible fuel option for decarbonizing the energy, transport, and industrial sectors. While photocatalytic approaches are known for generating hydrogen directly from water, most existing methods require (over)stoichiometric amounts of sacrificial reagents, which is far from ideal for the production of green hydrogen. To address this challenge, we have developed an atomically dispersed Ni-based photocatalyst that achieves hydrogen evolution rates of up to 270 μmol/g/h (168 mmol/g<sub>Ni</sub>/h). Remarkably, this photocatalyst also exhibits high photoreactivity under direct sunlight, producing up to 17 μmol/g/h (10.6 mmol/g<sub>Ni</sub>/h) of hydrogen. Impressively, the catalyst can even generate green hydrogen directly from seawater, up to 144 μmol/g/h, demonstrating significant potential for real-world applications. The photocatalyst is exceptionally stable, remaining active even after 720 h (140 h of irradiation and 580 h resting time) of operation and retaining high performance over more than 15 cycles. Furthermore, comprehensive spectroscopic and structural analyses─including HRTEM, PXRD, ssNMR, XPS, and XAS─provide detailed structural insights and confirm the atomically dispersed nature of the Ni species. In-depth mechanistic studies have elucidated the critical role of atomic dispersion in enabling robust photocatalytic efficiency.

Journal of the American Chemical SocietyVol. 147(44)
Jagiellonian University (PL), Stockholm University (SE), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN), Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics (CN), Leibniz Institute for Catalysis (DE), Institute for the Chemistry of OrganoMetallic Compounds (IT), Bologna Research Area (IT), Institute for Chemical and Physical Processes (IT), Resonance Research (United States) (US), Austrian Centre for Electron Microscopy and Nanoanalysis (AT), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (CH), University of Bayreuth (DE), Politecnico di Milano (IT)
Openalex Percentile: Top 21%
Advanced Photocatalysis Techniques
1.09
DOIOpen Access PDFOpenAlex
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