The 2022 solar fuels roadmap

Creators: Segev, Gideon; Kibsgaard, Jakob; Hahn, Christopher; Xu, Zhichuan J.; Cheng, Wen-Hui; Deutsch, Todd G.; Xiang, Chengxiang; Zhang, Jenny Z.; Hammarstrom, Leif; Nocera, Daniel G.; Weber, Adam Z.; Agbo, Peter; Hisatomi, Takashi; Osterloh, Frank E.; Domen, Kazunari; Abdi, Fatwa F.; Haussener, Sophia; Miller, Daniel J.; Ardo, Shane; McIntyre, Paul C.; Hannappel, Thomas; Hu, Shu; Atwater, Harry; Gregoire, John M.; Ertem, Mehmed Z.; Sharp, Ian D.; Choi, Kyoung-Shin; Lee, Jae Sung; Ishitani, Osamu; Ager, Joel W.; Prabhakar, Rajiv Ramanujam; Bell, Alexis T.; Boettcher, Shannon W.; Vincent, Kylie; Takanabe, Kazuhiro; Artero, Vincent; Napier, Ryan; Roldan Cuenya, Beatriz; Koper, Marc T. M.; van de Krol, Roel; Houle, Frances

Abstract

Renewable fuel generation is essential for a low carbon footprint economy. Thus, over the last five decades, a significant effort has been dedicated towards increasing the performance of solar fuels generating devices. Specifically, the solar to hydrogen efficiency of photoelectrochemical cells has progressed steadily towards its fundamental limit, and the faradaic efficiency towards valuable products in CO₂ reduction systems has increased dramatically. However, there are still numerous scientific and engineering challenges that must be overcame in order to turn solar fuels into a viable technology. At the electrode and device level, the conversion efficiency, stability and products selectivity must be increased significantly. Meanwhile, these performance metrics must be maintained when scaling up devices and systems while maintaining an acceptable cost and carbon footprint. This roadmap surveys different aspects of this endeavor: system benchmarking, device scaling, various approaches for photoelectrodes design, materials discovery, and catalysis. Each of the sections in the roadmap focuses on a single topic, discussing the state of the art, the key challenges and advancements required to meet them. The roadmap can be used as a guide for researchers and funding agencies highlighting the most pressing needs of the field.

Additional Information

© 2022 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. Received 5 November 2021; Accepted 13 May 2022; Published 22 June 2022. Acknowledgments: 1. Introduction Gideon Segev, Roel van de Krol and Frances Houle G S thanks the Azrieli Foundation for financial support within the Azrieli Fellows program. R V D K gratefully acknowledges financial support from the German Research Foundation (PAK 981), the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF Project Nos. 033RC021C and 03SF0619C) and the EU Horizon 2020 program ('Sun-to-X', Grant Agreement No. 883264). F A H: This material is based on work performed by the Liquid Sunlight Alliance, which is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Fuels from Sunlight Hub under Award Number DE-SC0021266. 2. Comparison of state of the art electrocatalysts for water splitting, CO2 reduction, and N2 reduction Jakob Kibsgaard, Christopher Hahn and Zhichuan J Xu J K gratefully acknowledges funding from the Carlsberg Foundation Grant CF18-0435. Work by C H was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344 and was supported by Laboratory Directed Research and Development funding under Project 19-SI-005. Z X thanks the funding support by the Singapore National Research Foundation under its Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE) programme, through eCO2EP programmes. 3. Efficiency and stability benchmarking. What is required to bring a solar fuels system to market? Wen-Hui (Sophia) Cheng, Todd G Deutsch and Chengxiang Xiang C X acknowledge the support from the Fuel Cell Technologies Office, of the U. S. Department of Energy, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy under Contract Number DE-EE0008092 and from SoCalGas under Award Number 5660060287. C X and W-H C acknowledge the support of the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Fuels from Sunlight Hub under Award Number DE-SC0021266 for the Liquid Sunlight Alliance program. W-H C also acknowledges the support from Ministry of Science and Technology (2030 Cross-Generation Young Scholars Program, Grant Number: 110-2628-E-006-005), Taiwan and Ministry of Education (Yushan Scholar Program), Taiwan, and in part from the Higher Education Sprout Project of the Ministry of Education to the Headquarters of University Advancement at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU). T G D acknowledges support from the HydroGEN Advanced Water Splitting Materials Consortium, established as part of the Energy Materials Network under the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office, under Award Number DE-EE-0008084. T G D also acknowledges support from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, operated by Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC, for the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract Number DE-AC36-08GO28308. The views expressed in the article do not necessarily represent the views of the DOE or the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the U.S. Government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this work, or allow others to do so, for U.S. Government purposes. 4. Comparing artificial and natural photosynthesis—bio concepts and hybrid systems Jenny Z Zhang, Leif Hammarström and Daniel G Nocera J Z would like to acknowledge the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/R011923/1). D G N acknowledges support from the U.S. Department of Energy (DE-SC0017619) and generous support from the TomKat Foundation. 5. Design and scale-up of solar fuels systems using current technologies—neutral pH, vapor-fed devices Adam Z Weber and Peter Agbo A Z W and P A acknowledge support by the Liquid Sunlight Alliance, which is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Fuels from Sunlight Hub under Award Number DE-SC0021266 and the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (A Z W, P A) under Award Number DE-SC0004993. 6. Particle-based systems: lessons learned and guidelines for large area systems Takashi Hisatomi, Frank E Osterloh and Kazunari Domen K D acknowledges financial supports from New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), Japan (Project Number P14002). T H acknowledges support from Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST)-PRESTO, Japan (Grant Number JPMJPR20T9). F E O acknowledges support from the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences under Award Number DOE-SC0015329. 7. Device design considerations for scale-up: managing photons, electrons, and ions Fatwa F Abdi and Sophia Haussener This material is based upon work performed with the financial support of a Starting Grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation, as part of the SCOUTS project (Grant #155876). F F A gratefully acknowledges financial support from the German Research Foundation under Germany's Excellence Strategy—EXC 2008/1 (UniSysCat)—390540038, the German Helmholtz Association—Excellence Network—ExNet-0024-Phase2-3, and the German Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF), project 'H2Demo' (No. 03SF0619A-K). 8. Membranes for solar fuels Daniel J Miller and Shane Ardo This material is based upon work performed at the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis, a DOE Energy Innovation Hub, supported through the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under Award Number DE-SC00493. This material is also based on work performed by the Liquid Sunlight Alliance, which is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Fuels from Sunlight Hub under Award Number DE-SC0021266. 9. Photoelectrodes based on conventional semiconductors (silicon, III–V) Paul C McIntyre, Thomas Hannappel and Shu Hu S H gratefully acknowledges the financial support provided by the Division of Chemical Sciences, Geosciences and Biosciences, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, of the US Department of Energy through Grant No. DE-SC0021953, and the financial support of a Scialog program sponsored jointly by Research Corporation for Science Advancement and the Alfred P Sloan Foundation through a grant to Yale University by the Thistledown Foundation. P C M gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the National Science Foundation Award No. CBET-1805084. T H gratefully acknowledges financial support of the German Research Foundation PAK 981, 3096/10 and 3096/19, and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF Project Nos. 033RC021A and 03SF0619I). 10. Nanostructures for light management in solar fuels and photoelectrochemistry Wen-Hui (Sophia) Cheng and Harry Atwater The authors acknowledge the support of the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Fuels from Sunlight Hub under Award Number DE-SC0021266 for the Liquid Sunlight Alliance program. W-H C also acknowledges the support from Ministry of Science and Technology (2030 Cross-Generation Young Scholars Program, Grant Number: 110-2628-E-006-005), Taiwan and Ministry of Education (Yushan Scholar Program), Taiwan, and in part from the Higher Education Sprout Project of the Ministry of Education to the Headquarters of University Advancement at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU). 11. Accelerating discovery of photoactive materials John M Gregoire and Mehmed Z Ertem The authors of this roadmap acknowledge support from the Liquid Sunlight Alliance, LiSA, (to J M G) and from the Center for Hybrid Approaches in Solar Energy to Liquid Fuels, CHASE, (to M Z E). LiSA (Award DE-SC0021266) and CHASE (Award DE-SC0021173) are Fuels from Sunlight Hubs supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences. 12. From materials discovery to functional photoelectrodes Ian D Sharp, Kyoung-Shin Choi and Jae Sung Lee I D S acknowledges support from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement No. 864234) and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany´s Excellence Strategy—EXC 2089/1-390776260. K-S C acknowledge the support from the Division of Chemical Sciences, Geosciences, and Biosciences, Office of Basic Energy Sciences of the U.S. Department of Energy through Grant DE-SC0008707. J S L acknowledges supports from Korean Ministry of Science and ICT through Grants of NRF-2019M1A2A2065612 and NRF-2018R1A2A1A05077909. 13. Molecular photoreduction and photocatalysts on photofunctional solid materials Osamu Ishitani Funding from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (KAKENHI Grant Numbers JP20H00396 and JP17H06440 in Scientific Research on Innovative Areas 'Innovations for Light-Energy Conversion (I4LEC))' is acknowledged. 14. Photocathode design: fundamental challenges and paths forward for CO2 reduction Joel W Ager and Rajiv Ramanujam Prabhakar This material is based upon work performed by the Liquid Sunlight Alliance, a DOE Energy Innovation Hub, supported through the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under Award Number DE-SC0004993. Rajiv Ramanujam Prabhakar acknowledges the Swiss National Science Foundation Early Postdoc Mobility Fellowship (191299) for financial support. 15. Oxygen evolution reaction: catalysts, mechanisms, and durability Alexis T Bell and Shannon W Boettcher A T B and S W B acknowledge support from the Liquid Solar Alliance (LiSA), a Fuels from Sunlight Hub, supported through the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under Award Number DE-SC0021266. 16. Remaining challenges for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER): catalysts and mechanism Kylie Vincent, Kazuhiko Takanabe and Vincent Artero K A V is grateful for funding from the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/R018413/1) and the European Research Council (ERC-2018-CoG BiocatSusChem 819580). K T acknowledges support from the Mohammed bin Salman Center for Future Science and Technology for Saudi-Japan Vision 2030 at The University of Tokyo (MbSC2030). V A gratefully acknowledges the French National Research Agency (Labex ARCANE, CBH-EUR-GS, ANR-17-EURE-0003, BEEP, ANR-18-CE05-0017-05) and the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement n° 883264 (project sun-to-X). Professor K Maeda (Tokyo Institute of Technology) is kindly acknowledged for the original TEM shown in figure 29(d). 17. CO2RR catalysis: surface reactivity and products selectivity Ryan Napier, Beatriz Roldan Cuenya and Marc T M Koper R N and M T M K acknowledge financial support from the Advanced Research Center for Chemical Building Blocks, ARC CBBC, which is co-founded and co-financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and the Netherlands Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy. B R C appreciates funding by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation)—Project No. 406944504—SPP 2080. Data availability statement: No new data were created or analysed in this study.

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