DIFFER researcher Georgios Zafeiropoulos will defend his PhD thesis titled "Making hydrogen out of thin air" on 24 June 2020. The defense will take place online.
As part of the worldwide effort to store sustainable energy in chemical form, Georgios Zafeiropoulos and his colleagues at DIFFER's CEPEA group have investigated the process of photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting: using sunlight to create hydrogen from water. The novel approach in Zafeiropoulos' work is the use of a polymeric electrolyte membrane (PEM) which allows the use of water in the gas phase - in other words, the ambient humidity of the air. By crafting, testing and steadily improving his own photoanodes, Zafeiropoulos was able to obtain record photocurrent densities for his PEC-PEM device. Long duration tests of 64 hours of cycling between 8 hours illumination and 8 hours darkness showed that the materials were stable and sturdy enough for use in practical outdoors conditions.
Go to the Events page.