PHOTOGEN - PHOTOactive aerophobic hydroGels for hydrogEN generation in molecular-based photoelectrosynthetic cells

Abstract:

The PHOTOGEN project aims at the fabrication of a standalone photoelectrochemical (PEC) device for the overall water splitting (WS), in which tunable molecular units, embedded in an aerophobic hydrogel, cooperatively work to absorb sunlight and exploit the photogenerated redox equivalents to perform the interfacial reactions. In particular, the proposed PEC will be constituted of molecular-based hybrid electrodes, namely a photoanode and a photocathode, respectively performing water oxidation and proton reduction. Thus, our device targets the production of hydrogen gas directly from water, exploiting charge transfers ultimately driven only by sunlight energy, i.e. a far greener process with the respect to methane reforming, currently used for H₂ production. Hydrogen itself can be then used as alternative transportation fuel (whose combustion does not produce CO₂), as well as reductant for key transformations in chemical, pharmaceutical and food industry in which high purity H₂ is required.

The benefits of PHOTOGEN approach include: (i) the exploitation of molecular sensitizers and catalysts, with tunable structure/property correlation; (ii) their incorporation within tailored aerophobic hydrogels, i.e. in a well-defined spatial arrangement; (iii) the possibility to gain mechanistic insights useful for future design.