New type of catalyst could aid hydrogen fuel

Ferroelectric substances might offer the right combination of catch and release

Hydrogen reactions diagram

SPLIT UP  Hydrogen, a clean-burning fuel, can be extracted from water molecules by splitting oxygen atoms from the hydrogens. A new computer simulation suggests a strategy for catalyzing that reaction that has the potential to be more efficient than current methods. 

JSquish/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

BALTIMORE — For a long time now, hydrogen has been the fuel of the future. A new idea for extracting hydrogen from water might help that future arrive a little sooner.

Today, producing hydrogen requires burning fossil fuels or using water-splitting catalysts that work relatively inefficiently, says physicist Arvin Kakekhani of Yale University. But Kakekhani and Sohrab Ismail-Beigi, also at Yale, identified a strategy using materials known as ferroelectric oxides to catalytically separate hydrogen from oxygen more effectively.

Catalysis requires a surface that both grips a water molecule in order to split it and releases the hydrogen atoms separated in the process. Ordinary catalysts must compromise between these two competing qualities. But a ferroelectric substance such as lead titanate can be prepared so that heat can switch it from a state suitable for splitting to another state good at releasing, computer simulations showed. Researchers therefore should be able to design a cycle of states that extracts hydrogen efficiently, Kakekhani reported March 17 in a news conference at a meeting of the American Physical Society.

“It’s a conceptual study that should be experimentally confirmed,” he said. A report on the work was also published online March 8 in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A.

Tom Siegfried is a contributing correspondent. He was editor in chief of Science News from 2007 to 2012 and managing editor from 2014 to 2017.

More Stories from Science News on Physics

From the Nature Index

Paid Content