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Best practices for photocatalytic water splitting

Nature Sustainability volume 7, pages 1082–1084 (2024)Cite this article

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Photocatalytic water splitting could be used to sustainably produce hydrogen. To assess its performance, solar-to-hydrogen energy conversion efficiency is the most important metric. Here, we discuss the common problems in reporting this metric and propose the use of water displacement to accurately measure the solar-to-hydrogen efficiency.

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Fig. 1: Variables that influence the solar-to-hydrogen energy conversion efficiency of photocatalytic water splitting.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO, project no. P21021) and the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST, grant no. JPMJPR20T9).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Initiative for Supra-Materials, Shinshu University, Nagano, Japan

    Takashi Hisatomi & Kazunari Domen

  2. Institute for Aqua Regeneration, Shinshu University, Nagano, Japan

    Takashi Hisatomi & Kazunari Domen

  3. Precursory Research for Embryonic Science and Technology, Japan Science and Technology Agency, Nagano, Japan

    Takashi Hisatomi

  4. Department of Chemistry, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Kazunari Domen

Authors
  1. Takashi Hisatomi
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  2. Kazunari Domen
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Correspondence to Kazunari Domen.

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Nature Sustainability thanks Gang Liu, Roland Marschall and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Hisatomi, T., Domen, K. Best practices for photocatalytic water splitting. Nat Sustain 7, 1082–1084 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-024-01382-y

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