With the falling cost of renewable energy and the abundant availability of solar and wind resources, Australia is an ideal place to scale up green hydrogen production. The global hydrogen industry is expected to increase 40% by 2030, with Australia aiming to become a leading exporter of hydrogen, with potential export values of $5.7b by 2040. To accelerate the development of a hydrogen economy and transition to a decarbonised future, we need to produce “clean” hydrogen at under AU$2.00 per kilogram. Nanostructured materials have attracted considerable attention for photocatalytic H2 production due to their unique physical and chemical properties in comparison to their bulk counterparts. These diverse nanostructures such as nanocrystals, nanopores, nanotubes, nanorods, nanowires, and other more complex hierarchical architectures with large surface areas, high surface to volume ratios, and numerous accessible catalytic active sites as well as efficient mass transport have been demonstrated to show extraordinary H2 production activity. Therefore, we have been working on the engineering of polarisation, chemical composition and morphology in promoting the specific photocatalytic activity of nanomaterials, which will enrich our knowledge on enhancing the nanophotocatalysis in structural and elemental aspects.
L. Hao, L. Kang, H. Huang, L. Ye, K. Han, S. Yang, H. Yu, M. Batmunkh, Y. Zhang, T. Y. Ma. Surface halogenation induced atomic site activation and local charge separation for superb CO2 photoreduction. Advanced Materials, 2019, 31, 1900546.