Background: Development of stable electroactive units for electricity generation or production of fuels and chemicals is essential as the development of environmentally and economically sustainable energy sources using solar energy is an important unmet challenge. Although there exist increasingly efficient and decreasingly costly semiconductors used in photovoltaic applications (e.g. Si Cu2S CdSe CdTe SnS etc.) a major challenge is stabilizing these high-efficiency materials against photocorrosion when operating in the electrochemical environment of a PEC cell. Technology Description: High-quality semiconductors protected by our proprietary coating will allow various industrial plants or wastewater treatment facilities (that produce/host large streams of electrolyte containing bromine chlorine hydrogen ions) to produce hydrogen or utilize sunlight as a source for onsite electricity generation. In addition the unique PAH design and practical fabrication methodologies and processes are highly scalable. This technology could allow photovoltaic (PV) industries to utilize their current solar cells for production of storable valuable fuels and other valuable chemicals in addition to electricity generation. UC Santa Barbara researchers have developed multi-junction photosynthetic units with novel architecture using simple low-cost electrochemical approaches that have the potential to obtain voltages sufficient to split water and/or reduce CO2 to fuels and chemicals in an efficient and stable manner. Applications: 1) Photovoltaic materials 2) Solar cells
1) Highly scalable fabrication methodologies and processes 2) Can be used with existing solar cell technologies