UofL/UK research may help create inexpensive clean energy Work
by scientists at the University of Louisville and the University
of Kentucky is advancing the search for inexpensive clean
energy. With U.S. Department of Energy funding, chemical
engineering professor Mahendra Sunkara and graduate student
Chandrashekhar Pendyala at the UofL Conn Center for Renewable
Energy Research, and professors Madhu Menon and R. Michael
Sheetz at the UK Center for Computational Sciences, are leading
research into using sunlight to generate hydrogen from water.
The Physical Review Journal published their findings earlier in
August. (Phys Rev B 84, 075304). Long touted as a likely key
component in the transition to cleaner energy sources, pure
hydrogen gas is not found in free abundance on Earth and must be
manufactured by unlocking it from other compounds. The team has
found that an alloy of antimony (Sb) and gallium nitride (GaN)
helps sunlight split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen.
Once they are separate, hydrogen c