Recently, Xiong Yujie group University of Science and Technology of China proposed a new mechanism of photocatalytic hydrogen production, which introduced the concept of coordination chemistry into organic nano-materials, and its products showed a substantial increase photocatalytic hydrogen production performance in the broad spectrum of light. In this study, the researchers took the two-dimensional nano-material of organic semiconductor as a macromolecular ligands, to use the nitrogen atom sites and introduce the platinum ions or cheaper copper ions which the content is less than thousandth to form a metal - organic semiconductor of nano coordination structure; the very small amount of nano-ligand containing cells induced the transfer and transition process of the produced charges, so that the catalyst product can carry out a photocatalytic hydrogen production in a broad spectrum of sunlight range. The development of this technology will promote the organic semiconductor material in light of the terms of hydrogen production, as well as to open up a new way of thinking for designing broad spectrum of photocatalytic material.

 

Photocatalytic water splitting hydrogen production technology is a way which can directly convert solar radiation to hydrogen energy, the great potential for development of new energy technologies, and also the problem in inner industry which is expected to be solved in recent years. Photocatalytic hydrogen production technology is mechanism which bases on the action of the semiconductor intersubband transitions to achieve the transfer of energy. Organic semiconductor materials are usually made of rich nature of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and other elements, which helps to reduce material costs, and in order to achieve large-scale production of the photocatalyst.

 

The band gap of tungsten trioxide is 2.4eV ~ 2.8eV, which means it can respond to a wide spectral band; at the same time, it has photocatalytic property, and belongs to a broad-spectrum light catalytic material. Experimental has found that tungsten trioxide doped with cerium (Ce) has a good activity in the hydrolysis of hydrogen light, which performance in that a certain amount of Ce can expand the tungsten trioxide response to larger visible light range, to improve the photocatalytic activity of 1.5 to 1.7 times. With the continuously research and enabled of new energy, tungsten trioxide will play a more important role in the applications in photocatalysis, desulfurization and denitration, architectural glass and other industries.