Day by day, the demand for energy increases worldwide. A study showed that it is expected that the energy need will expand by 55% between 2005 and 2030. Nowadays, the most implemented energy resource is non-renewable energy that is obtained from fossil fuels which are not sufficient to fulfil the future demand due to their rapid depletion and adverse environmental impact. Many efforts were made to find effective and economical methods to harvest renewable energy. One method is Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting which produces hydrogen from water under the sunlight by using an effective photoelectrocatalyst. In this work, for the first time, the hematite thin film coated with cobalt ferrite was synthesised using pulsed laser deposition (PLD) to enhance the production of green hydrogen. Hematite (Fe2O3) and cobalt-ferrite (Co-Fe2O4) were used because of their unique properties. This material has narrow bandgap energy and it absorbs visible light between 468nm-590nm. Moreover, the thin film was examined through linear sweep voltammetry (LSV), electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), and chronoamperometry (CA). LSV depicts that under light conditions, the modified electrode generated 1.09 mA/cm2 at 1.6 V vs RHE; that is 200% more current generated compared to hematite. However, under dark conditions, the modified electrode generated 0.3 mA/cm2 at 1.6 V vs RHE; that is 1900% more compared to hematite. Hence, these results were proven by EIS and CA, as EIS showed that the modified electrode has significantly low charge transfer resistance and CA proved the stability of the material. Nevertheless, CO2 was captured as the research aims to produce green hydrogen. This study can be beneficial for the development of a hydrogen production system for field applications using solar radiation.
الجوائز التي حاز عليها :
المركز الثالث في معرض ريجينيرون الدولي للعلوم والهندسة (آيسف)
المركز السادس في الأولمبياد الوطني للإبداع العلمي
جائزة خاصة مقدمة من وكالة الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية للتطوير العالمي
جائزة خاصة مقدمة من شركة إكسون موبيل
