Published October 8, 2021 | Version v1
Dataset Open

Optimizing accuracy and efficacy in data-driven materials discovery for the solar production of hydrogen

  • 1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and Materials Research Institute, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA
  • 2. Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, USA
  • 3. Department of Chemistry and Materials Research Institute, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA
  • 4. Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
  • 5. Theory and Simulation of Materials (THEOS) and National Centre for Computational Design and Discovery of Novel Materials (MARVEL), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
  • 6. School of Applied and Engineering Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
  • 7. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
  • 8. Institutes of Energy and the Environment, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA
  • 9. National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO, USA
  • 10. Department of Physics, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy

* Contact person

Description

The production of hydrogen fuels, via water splitting, is of practical relevance for meeting global energy needs and mitigating the environmental consequences of fossil-fuel-based transportation. Water photoelectrolysis has been proposed as a viable approach for generating hydrogen, provided that stable and inexpensive photocatalysts with conversion efficiencies over 10% can be discovered, synthesized at scale, and successfully deployed (Pinaud et al., Energy Environ. Sci., 2013, 6, 1983). While a number of first-principles studies have focused on the data-driven discovery of photocatalysts, in the absence of systematic experimental validation, the success rate of these predictions may be limited. We address this problem by developing a screening procedure with co-validation between experiment and theory to expedite the synthesis, characterization, and testing of the computationally predicted, most desirable materials. Starting with 70150 compounds in the Materials Project database, the proposed protocol yielded 71 candidate photocatalysts, 11 of which were synthesized as single-phase materials. Experiments confirmed hydrogen generation and favorable band alignment for 6 of the 11 compounds, with the most promising ones belonging to the families of alkali and alkaline-earth indates and orthoplumbates. This study shows the accuracy of a nonempirical, Hubbard-corrected density-functional theory method to predict band gaps and band offsets at a fraction of the computational cost of hybrid functionals, and outlines an effective strategy to identify photocatalysts for solar hydrogen generation.

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References

Journal reference (Paper in which the details of the method and dataset are discussed)
Y. Xiong, Q. T. Campbell, J. Fanghanel, C. K. Badding, H. Wang, N. E. Kirchner-Hall, M. J. Theibault, I. Timrov, J. S. Mondschein, K. Seth, R. Katz, A. Molina Villarino, B. Pamuk, M. E. Penrod, M. M. Khan, T. Rivera, N. C. Smith, X. Quintana, P. Orbe, C. J. Fennie, S. Asem-Hiablie, J. L. Young, T. G. Deutsch, M. Cococcioni, V. Gopalan, H. D. Abruña, R. E. Schaak, I. Dabo, Energy Environ. Sci. 14, 2335-2348 (2021), doi: 10.1039/D0EE02984J

Journal reference (Paper in which the details of the method and dataset are discussed)
Y. Xiong, Q. T. Campbell, J. Fanghanel, C. K. Badding, H. Wang, N. E. Kirchner-Hall, M. J. Theibault, I. Timrov, J. S. Mondschein, K. Seth, R. Katz, A. Molina Villarino, B. Pamuk, M. E. Penrod, M. M. Khan, T. Rivera, N. C. Smith, X. Quintana, P. Orbe, C. J. Fennie, S. Asem-Hiablie, J. L. Young, T. G. Deutsch, M. Cococcioni, V. Gopalan, H. D. Abruña, R. E. Schaak, I. Dabo, Energy Environ. Sci. 14, 2335-2348 (2021)