Using inexpensive, earth-abundant materials, the Company’s research team has developed a highly efficient, oxygen catalyst that appears to be stable over time
SANTA BARBARA, CA – May 9, 2017 - HyperSolar, Inc. (OTCQB: HYSR), the developer of a breakthrough technology to produce renewable hydrogen using sunlight and any source of water, today announced the successful development of an efficient and low-cost catalyst for oxygen production – an important half reaction of water-splitting for hydrogen production.
The amount of hydrogen produced by water splitting is fundamentally limited by the slower oxygen half reaction. Developing an efficient oxygen catalyst is an important milestone in the Company’s effort to split water molecules for the production of renewable hydrogen.
The Company believes that a commercially viable oxygen catalyst needs to satisfy five important characteristics when integrated on the surface of a solar cell for water-splitting: 1) Highly transparent to maximize sunlight reaching the solar cell; 2) Stable over a long time; 3) Efficient; 4) Uses inexpensive materials, and 5) Deposited under ambient temperature and pressure using environmentally benign conditions. Currently a catalyst that addresses all five characteristics does not exist.
Currently best performing oxygen catalysts are mostly made of rare earth elements such as iridium and ruthenium. There has been numerous research focused on developing highly efficient oxygen catalysts using earth abundant materials, however development of a catalyst satisfying all of the above characteristics has remained elusive.
HyperSolar in partnership with The University of Iowa has recently made some significant breakthroughs toward perfecting such a catalyst:
Developed an efficient and stable oxygen catalyst using inexpensive earth abundant elements.
Developed an extremely low cost ambient process to deposit an ultrathin layer (less than 10 nanometers) of the catalyst on the surface of a solar cell. The deposition process is highly scalable and rapid (takes less than 10 seconds) enabling deposition on large area solar panels for commercial production.
Due to the ultrathin nature of the film, the entire catalyst layer is 86% transparent to visible sunlight.
Demonstrated stable and efficient operation for more than 48 hours under aggressive operating conditions. The efficiency is roughly estimated to be 75% of the efficiency of iridium.
Currently the team is further optimizing the catalyst to reach 90% of the efficiency of iridium based catalysts, while simultaneously optimizing the catalyst deposition process on a commercially available amorphous silicon solar cell, as part of a commercial prototype under development.
“By identifying a simple, environmentally-benign, rapid process to integrate inexpensive, transparent catalyst on solar cells, we are edging closer to our goal of low-cost green hydrogen for commercial use,” said Joun Lee, CTO of HyperSolar.
Tim Young, CEO of HyperSolar, commented, “When it comes to hydrogen it’s all about the cost. Anyone can split water using high-school electrolysis to produce hydrogen. But, the commercial challenge is to make the system cost so low that solar-based hydrogen can truly be the one clean fuel to replace all fuels. By fundamentally reducing the costs and increasing the efficiency of every component from the nano-scale up, we believe our path has the best potential to produce the lowest cost hydrogen.”
HyperSolar’s research is centered on developing a low-cost and submersible hydrogen production particle that can split water molecules under the sun, emulating the core functions of photosynthesis. Each particle is a complete hydrogen generator that contains a novel high voltage solar cell bonded to efficient catalysts by a proprietary protective coating. A video detailing the rise of hydrogen fuel technology as well as HyperSolar’s completely renewable process of hydrogen fuel production can be viewed by visiting here.
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