A new 2D material developed by an international research team harnesses solar energy to generate hydrogen from fresh, saline or polluted water sources. The flexible structure produces the renewable fuel photocatalytically under near-infrared illumination.A platinum layer is sandwiched between a thin bottom film of gold and a chromium-based metal-organic framework top layer. Source: Tomsk Polytechnic University

A 10 nm thick platinum layer is sandwiched between a thin bottom film of gold and a chromium-based metal-organic framework top layer. The gold structure served to excite the hot electrons and transfer them into the platinum and metal-organic layers. When saturated with hot electrons, the latter two structures efficiently initiate water splitting and hydrogen production. The metal-organic framework filtered out water impurities and was also observed to repel generated hydrogen bubbles. A 100 cm² surface of the 1 μm thick, 2D material produced 0.5 L of hydrogen/hour during experiments.

Researchers from Tomsk Polytechnic University (Russia), the University of Chemistry and Technology (Czech Republic) and Jan Evangelista Purkyne University (Czech Republic) will continue to improve the material to enable its exploitation of 93% of the spectral volume of sunlight.