Although photoelectrochemical water splitting is likely to be an important and powerful tool to provide environmentally friendly hydrogen, most developments in this field have been conducted on a laboratory scale so far. In order for the technology to make a sizeable impact on the energy transition, scaled up devices made of inexpensive and earth abundant materials must be developed. In this work, we demonstrate a scalable (64 cm2 aperture area) artificial photoelectrochemical device composed of triple-junction thin-film silicon solar cells in conjunction with an electrodeposited bifunctional nickel iron molybdenum water splitting catalyst. Our device shows a solar to hydrogen efficiency of up to 4.67% (5.33% active area) without bias assistance and wire connection. Furthermore, gas separation was enabled by incorporating a membrane in a 3D printed device frame.
@article{arxiv.1910.13948,
title = {A highly integrated, stand-alone photoelectrochemical device for large-scale solar hydrogen production},
author = {Minoh Lee and Bugra Turan and Jan-Philipp Becker and Katharina Welter and Benjamin Klingebiel and Elmar Neumann and Yoo Jung Sohn and Tsvetelina Merdzhanova and Thomas Kirchartz and Friedhelm Finger and Uwe Rau and Stefan Haas},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1910.13948},
year = {2019}
}