Achievement

Mr. Luther Mahoney’s work on mesoporous materials for solar hydrogen production suggests that a dispersion of transition metal ions such as Cr in high-surface-area mesoporous silica facilitates production of hydrogen under UV radiation. The presence of both Cr(VI) and Cr(III) seems to be important since in the absence of either one of them, hydrogen production is diminished. The presence of intimately coupled Cr6+/Cr3+ ions that are highly dispersed on a mesoporous support facilitates electron transfer and optimizes photocatalytic activity. This work was presented at the spring ACS meeting held in San Diego, 2012. A manuscript based on these results has been submitted to the Journal of Physical Chemistry C.