来自太阳的燃料：多项物理模拟，高通量新型材料

研发和原型器件的制造

项呈祥

人工光合作用联合中心 加州理工学院

摘要

As the level of penetration for the renewable energy sources continues to rise, large-scale,long-term energy storage technologies that could time-shift the usage of the energy daily or seasonally starts to play a significant role in the overall development and deployment of renewable energies. One approach to compensate for the intermittency of sunlight on the surface of the earth is to store solar energy in the form of chemical bonds, i.e., in an artificial photosynthetic process.Development of efficient artificial photosynthesis devices requires materials discoveries as well as synthetic assembly these materials, including light absorbers, electrocatalysts, membrane separators and electrolytes. In this talk, I will first present a robust multiphysics, multi-dimensional device model that was used to guide the materials discovery,to define operational conditions and constraints and to optimize and explore novel device architectures for solar-driven water-splitting devices. Then, I will present high throughput synthesis and screening tools that were developed to search for new light absorbers and electrocatalysts materials for solar-fuel applications. Through themodeling guided prototype development and through the materials discovery efforts, the team was able to reach a critical milestone, and demonstrate and benchmark a range of stable and intrinsically safe solar-driven hydrogen generating devices with >10% conversion efficiency.

DOI: 10.12110/firstfmge.20171121.208