Photoelectrochemical water splitting in separate oxygen and hydrogen cells

Landman, Avigail; Dotan, Hen; Shter, Gennady E.; Wullenkord, Michael; Houaijia, Anis; Maljusch, Artjom; Grader, Gideon S.; Rothschild, Avner

doi:10.1038/nmat4876

Cited by 572Advanced Photocatalysis TechniquesIron oxide chemistry and applicationsElectrocatalysts for Energy Conversion

Photoelectrochemical water splitting in separate oxygen and hydrogen cells

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Landman, Avigail, Dotan, Hen, Shter, Gennady E., Wullenkord, Michael, Houaijia, Anis, Maljusch, Artjom, Grader, Gideon S., Rothschild, Avner·2017·Nature Materials

DOI 10.1038/nmat4876

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Abstract

Solar water splitting provides a promising path for sustainable hydrogen production and solar energy storage. One of the greatest challenges towards large-scale utilization of this technology is reducing the hydrogen production cost. The conventional electrolyser architecture, where hydrogen and oxygen are co-produced in the same cell, gives rise to critical challenges in photoelectrochemical water splitting cells that directly convert solar energy and water to hydrogen. Here we overcome these challenges by separating the hydrogen and oxygen cells. The ion exchange in our cells is mediated by auxiliary electrodes, and the cells are connected to each other only by metal wires, enabling centralized hydrogen production. We demonstrate hydrogen generation in separate cells with solar-to-hydrogen conversion efficiency of 7.5%, which can readily surpass 10% using standard commercial components. A basic cost comparison shows that our approach is competitive with conventional photoelectrochemical systems, enabling safe and potentially affordable solar hydrogen production.

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Water electrolysis still necessitates a continuous input of high-purity electrolyte and an external power supply to maintain the system.
“water electrolysis still necessitates a continuous input of high-purity electrolyte and an external power supply to maintain the system.[29,36]”
From Advances in Blue Energy Fuels: Harvesting Energy from Ocean for Self‐Powered Electrolysis (2025) · cites this paper as [36]
The Methods section says the tested cells used 1 M NaOH in deionized water and connected the primary electrodes to a power source. It does not say that a continuous input of high-purity electrolyte is necessary. The Methods also describe a solar-powered test with no additional external bias, so the claim that an external power supply is always required overstates the paper. (LLM, conf=0.86)
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[34]34. K. D. Malviya, H. Dotan, K. R. Yoon, I.-D. Kima, A. Rothschild, Rigorous substrate cleaning process for reproducible thin film hematite (α-Fe2O3) photoanodes. J. Mater. Res. 31 , 1565-1573 (2016). Acknowledgments The research leading to these results has received funding from the Solar Fuels I-CORE program of the Planning and Budgeting Committee and the Israel Science Foundation (Grant No. 152/11), from the Israeli Ministry of National Infrastructure, Energy and Water Resources, and from Europe's Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH-JU) under Grant Agreement n. [621252]. The results were obtained using central facilities at the Technion's Hydrogen Technologies Research Laboratory (HTRL), supported by the Nancy and Stephen Grand Technion Energy Program (GTEP) and the Adelis Foundation. A. R. acknowledges support for developing photoelectrodes and PEC-PV tandem cells for solar water splitting from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013) / ERC Grant Agreement n. [617516]. G. E. S. acknowledges support from the Committee for Planning and Budgeting of the Council for Higher Education under the framework of the KAMEA Program. G. S. G. acknowledges support from the Arturo Gruenbaum Chair in Material Engineering. The authors thank Yeshayahu Lifshitz and Scott C. Warren for reading the manuscript and providing useful suggestions for improving it. Author Contributions A.R. and G.G. conceived and guided the entire project. A.L., H.D. and G.S. designed the experiments. A.L. and H.D. performed the experiments and analyzed the data. All authors contributed to the cost analysis. A.R., G.G. and A.L. wrote the manuscript. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript. Author Information Reprints and permissions information is available at www.nature.com/reprints. The authors declare no competing financial interests. Readers are welcome to comment on the online version of the paper. Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to A.R. (avner@mt.technion.ac.il) and G.G. (grader@technion.ac.il).

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Authors: Landman, A., Dotan, H., Shter, G. E., Wullenkord, M., Houaijia, A., Maljusch, A., Grader, G. S., & Rothschild, A.
Affiliations: Technion – Israel Institute of Technology (IL)
Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e. V. (DLR) (DE)
Evonik (Germany) (DE)
Corresponding author: Grader, Gideon S.
Rothschild, Avner
ORCID: Landman, Avigail
Shter, Gennady E.
Wullenkord, Michael
Grader, Gideon S.
Rothschild, Avner
Venue: Nature Materials
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published: 2017-03-13
Volume: 16
Issue: 6
Pages: 646-651
ISSN: 1476-1122 (ISSN-L)
1476-4660
DOI: 10.1038/nmat4876
OpenAlex: W2595002228
Cited by: 572
References: 36
Citations by year: 2026: 36 · 2025: 69 · 2024: 66 · 2023: 67 · 2022: 70 · 2021: 73 · 2020: 67 · 2019: 65 · 2018: 46 · 2017: 13
FWCI: 13.99
Type: journal article
Language: en
Open access: green
arxiv.org
Licence: www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
www.springer.com/tdm (vor)
Locations: Nature Materials (publishedVersion)
PubMed (publishedVersion)
elib (German Aerospace Center) (acceptedVersion)
arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
arXiv (Cornell University)
Topics: Physical Sciences › Energy › Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment › Advanced Photocatalysis Techniques
Physical Sciences › Energy › Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment › Iron oxide chemistry and applications
Physical Sciences › Energy › Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment › Electrocatalysts for Energy Conversion
Keywords: photoelectrochemical water splitting, solar hydrogen production, auxiliary electrode, ion exchange, solar-to-hydrogen efficiency, hydrogen production cost, solar energy storage

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Photoelectrochemical water splitting in separate oxygen and hydrogen cells

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