Hydrogen generation technologies using semiconductor materials

Abstract

Hydrogen is an eco-friendly energy resource because of the absence of greenhouse gas emission at the point of use, and the infrastructure for hydrogen has now been put in place. However, with our present technologies, greenhouse gases are emitted during hydrogen production. Water splitting using solar energy is one of the emerging technologies to produce hydrogen without greenhouse gases. Among several techniques for the water splitting, photoelectrochemistry using semiconductor photocatalysts is the most viable. This article describes recent developments with semiconductor photocatalysts for photoelectrochemistry and introduces our photocatalyst material: cubic silicon carbide.