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Silicon reacts extremely slowly with water to produce hydrogen gas, but 10-nanometre-wide silicon particles react 1,000 times faster.
Mark Swihart, Paras Prasad and their colleagues at the State University of New York at Buffalo report that 1 gram of powdered silicon can generate about 2 litres of hydrogen in about 45 seconds — a rate that is sufficient for systems to produce hydrogen fuel on demand from water.
The authors say that the process they used to generate the silicon powders — breaking up silane gas with lasers — can produce kilograms of powder in an hour, which may mean that the process has the potential to move beyond niche applications.
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Hydrogen on demand. Nature 494, 285 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/494285f
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/494285f