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Generation of Clean Energy Now Possible with Newly Designed Chip

One of the many problems that we are facing right now is the lack of fuel. Scientists are already behind that, and that is coming to be a major problem that we are facing right now. But the pursuit right now is not just for fuel, but for abundant, renewable alternatives to fossil fuels.

Well, scientists have been on the job for a while, and it seems that they have come up with a solution. Scientists have produced hydrogen for fuel cells through artificial photosynthesis. So why is this special? Well, this particular fuel has the ability to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.

New Technology

The team has created an artificial photosynthesis device and is called a hybrid photoelectrochemical and voltaic cell. So what does this do? This turns sunlight and water into hydrogen and electricity. In the owner’s own words, this is an energy source that could be harvested, and that is a great boon as all other forms of energy sources need to be collected or fertilized.

This is no new technology, but the method behind this has been changed significantly. Traditional process and methods have struggled to use optical, electronic and chemical properties in a way that make this method efficient, but the end results have always been a bit sketchy.

But why store extra energy in batteries instead of making hydrogen? Well, batteries are expensive, and fuel chips are not cheap either. So, the generation of hydrogen is key in this new method.

Unique and Replaceable

So, what does this new process include? The solution behind this new process is to simply let out those electrons. Now, to aid in that the company added a silicon component into the device. Now, this chip splits the current produced by the sunlight’s energy, and thus this allows some of the current to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen.

The previous method had an efficiency of 6.8 percent. But this new process has a combined efficiency of 20.2 percent. Now right now the team plans on continuing to improve the device, and also to use the device in real-world uses or applications.