FURI | Spring 2019

To Study the Effects of Co-doping Ceria with 2+/5+ Dopants for Thermochemical Splitting of Water

Thermochemical water splitting can occur by concentrating solar energy on a metal oxide to generate hydrogen gas, a clean high energy fuel.  This research examines suitable dopants to enhance the redox reactions of ceria to carry them out at a lower temperature and pressure along with high hydrogen production capacity. Density Functional Theory based quantum simulations are performed to probe the effects of these dopants. In the present research, Ceria doped with Sr and Nb gives reduction energy of 1.10 eV. The future work is to determine other 2+/5+ dopants which enable ceria to meet the minimum energy criteria for water-splitting.