Highly Efficient Visible Light Photocatalytic Production of H2

Intensive effort has been made to develop photocatalytic processes to convert solar energy to clean fuels. So far, however, energy conversion efficiency for the visible-light photocatalytic splitting of water to hydrogen is less than 1%. In this talk, I will highlight recent findings for visible light photocatalysis in my group, including: (1) demonstrating that surface-diffuse-reflected-light can be 2 orders of magnitude more efficient than incident light for photocatalysis, (2) revealing that the inefficiency of absorbed visible light for the photocatalytic H2 production from water with a sacrificial agent is due to its kinetic limitation, and (3) inventing a novel temperature-induced visible light photocatalytic H2 production from water steam with a sacrificial agent to reach a high photohydrogen yield of 497 mmol/h/gcat with a large apparent quantum efficiency (QE) of 65.7% for entire visible light range.