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Solar-fuel generation

Towards practical implementation

Nature Materials volume 11, pages 100–101 (2012)Cite this article

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Limiting reliance on non-renewable fossil fuels inevitably depends on a more efficient utilization of solar energy. Materials scientists discuss the most viable approaches to produce high-energy-density fuels from sunlight that can be implemented in existing infrastructures.

The Earth receives approximately 5,000 times more energy from the Sun than mankind uses in a year. It seems unavoidable that to limit our reliance on non-renewable fossil fuels (from where more than 80% of our energy consumption currently comes from) we need to direct our efforts towards a more rational use of solar energy1. In recent years, the notion of solar-fuel generation — technologies that harvest solar energy and then stores it in the form of chemical fuels with high energy density — has gained momentum for various reasons. Compared with photovoltaic and wind energy, which deliver high-quality energy in the form of electricity, solar-fuel has the advantage of solving the problem with temporal variations in supply as the final fuels are easy to store, and in some cases are already compatible with the present infrastructures and the transport sector. The latest advances in solar-fuel generation were the focus of the 'Advanced Materials for Solar-Fuel Generation' symposium at the 2011 MRS Fall meeting in Boston.

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Figure 1: Schematic of a device based on a tandem design.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Søren Dahl and Ib Chorkendorff are at the Center for Individual Nanoparticle Functionality (CINF), Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby DK-2800, Denmark,

    Søren Dahl & Ib Chorkendorff

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  1. Søren Dahl
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  2. Ib Chorkendorff
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Correspondence to Ib Chorkendorff.

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Dahl, S., Chorkendorff, I. Towards practical implementation. Nature Mater 11, 100–101 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3233

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