Wenyan Zhang

Progress in Characterization Techniques in Spintronic Enhanced Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution

In recent years, the fossil fuel crisis has triggered the worldwide demand for new clean energy. Hydrogen is a desirable candidate due to its high combustive enthalpy and zero-pollution characteristics. A promising approach for the hydrogen production is splitting H2 from water by solar driven photo-catalytic hydrogen evolution reaction. The development of photo-catalytic HER is inhibited by many factors:especiallythe the large energy loss and the electron-hole recombination during electron transportation, and high over-potential of proton reduction and water oxidation.Spintronic science sheds new lights on solving these obstacles by triggering the high efficient spin transfer and electron tunneling, as well aselectrons spin filtering to decrease the over-potential of the reaction and suppress the yield of by-products.The progresses in characterization techniques have contributed greatly to the unveiling of the scientific secrets in spintronic enhanced HER research. Yet, few work hasbeen carried out to sum up the setechniques and to analyze the potential challenges that inhibit their future development. Given that, this review focuses on these topics and provides an expectation for its development trends.