Gold nanoparticles improves solar energy storage

Star-shaped gold nanoparticles, coated with a semiconductor, creates hydrogen from water over four times more effectively than other methods. The results may improve storage of solar energy. "Instead of using ultraviolet light, which is the standard practice, we leveraged the energy of visible and infrared light to excite electrons in gold nanoparticles," said Laura Fabris, associate professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in the School of Engineering who led the work with Fuat Celik, assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering. "Excited electrons in the metal can be transferred more efficiently into the semiconductor, which catalyzes the reaction."This study focuses on harvesting sunlight to make quicker or more economical reactions. In the study, experts  tapped light that permitted gold nanoparticles to absorb faster. Its then transferred to the electrons created from the light absorption to nearby materials like titanium dioxide.

Researchers coated gold nanoparticles with titanium dioxide and exposed the material to UV, visible, and infrared light and studied how electrons jump from gold to the material. The results were that the electrons made hydrogen from water over four times more efficiently. "Our outstanding results were ever so clear," Fabris said. "We were also able to use very low temperature synthesis to coat these gold particles with crystalline titanium. I think both from the materials perspective and the catalysis perspective, this work was very exciting all along. And we were extremely lucky that our doctoral students, Supriya Atta and Ashley Pennington, were also as excited about it as we were. This was our first foray," she added, "but once we understand the material and how it operates, we can design materials for applications in different fields, such as semiconductors, the solar or chemical industries or converting carbon dioxide into something we can use. In the future, we could greatly broaden the ways we take advantage of sunlight."

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