Why Hydrogen Is Essential For Decarbonization
As the quest for decarbonizing our energy systems goes on, it becomes clear that some processes might need more than just green electricity. This is maybe true for transportation, especially heavy-duty tasks like buses and trucks, certainly true for shipping and flying, and equally required for heavy industries like steel making and chemicals production.
The reason is that some applications need either very hot combustion (metallurgy), the provision of energetic hydrogen atoms without using methane (chemical industry), or a very energy-dense fuel (shipping), for which electrical power and batteries just don’t fit the bill.
“Passenger cars can have a battery, but heavy trucks, ships or aircraft cannot use a battery to store the energy. For these means of transport, we need to find clean and renewable energy sources, and hydrogen is a good candidate.”
Jianwu Sun – Associate professor at Linköping University
This is why researchers and climate activists have been considering green hydrogen, produced without fossil fuel, as an alternative. The issue is, however, that green hydrogen production has so far been too expensive to allow for mass adoption against fossil fuels.
How To Solve The Green Hydrogen Production Challenge
So far, most methods to produce hydrogen are working around a 2-step method:
- First, produce green energy with solar, wind, hydropower, or any other renewable form of energy.
- Second, use this green electricity to power the catalysis of water into hydrogen.
The problem with that is that any multi-step process is necessarily less efficient.
For example, sunlight gets converted into power by solar panels at only a 20-25% yield; then, the power is transported to a hydrogen catalyzer, itself with a relatively low yield. In the end, the solar energy to hydrogen total yield is likely in the low single digits.
And there is the question of costs. The catalyzer is likely consuming rare metals like platinum or palladium. Renewable energy production also uses rare materials like silver, and the transmission of power from the solar farm to the catalyzer often requires massive investments.
Lastly, most hydrogen-producing catalyzers demand a stable level of electrical power, which means that large battery systems must be added as additional components to the infrastructure required.
There are many possible approaches for solving this being explored. For example, we discussed previously:
Each of these methods might ultimately work in creating cheaper catalysts that do not require an expensive amount of fresh platinum to produce hydrogen.
But a new approach is to do direct photocatalysis, or the transformation of water into hydrogen directly from the energy of sunlight, without conversion into electrical power first. Direct photocatalysis not only can remove the need for multiple steps, but also uses simpler and less rare materials to build green power generation and infrastructures.
This is the approach championed by researchers at Linköping University (Sweden), Kyushu University (Japan), MAX IV Laboratory (Sweden), and Dalian University of Technology (China). They published their latest progress in the Journal of the American Chemical Society1 under the title “Manipulating Electron Structure through Dual-Interface Engineering of 3C-SiC Photoanode for Enhanced Solar Water Splitting”.
Silicon Carbide For Photocatalysis
How Silicon Carbide Enables Direct Photocatalysis
This research team has previously worked with a material called cubic silicon carbide (3C-SiC).
Source: RRL Solar
The material can effectively capture the sunlight for hydrogen production through the photochemical water splitting reaction.
Source: RRL Solar
When sunlight hits the material, electric charges are generated (like in a polysilicon solar panel), which are then used to split water.
A challenge in the development of materials for this application is to prevent the positive and negative charges from merging again and neutralizing each other.
So, to make the splitting of water into hydrogen more effective, keeping the electrical charges separated is important.
New Tri-Layer Silicon Carbide Catalyst Design
The researchers combined a layer of cubic silicon carbide with two other layers, using nickel hydroxide (Ni(OH)2) and cobalt oxides (Co3O4).
The team had previously perfected the production of cubic silicon carbide using the sublimation technique, confirming the quality of the crystal with X-ray diffraction (XRD).
Source: Journal of the American Chemical Society
They also confirmed that the interface between the layers increased the lifetime of the electric charges, increasing the chance of the electrons being used by chemical reactions splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen.
“It’s a very complicated structure, so our focus in this study has been to understand the function of each layer and how it helps improve the properties of the material.
The new material has eight times better performance than pure cubic silicon carbide for splitting water into hydrogen.”
Jianwu Sun – Associate professor at Linköping University
Next Steps For Boosting Photocatalysis Efficiency
So far, silicon carbide photocatalysis has been only able to reach a 1-3% energetic yield.
The presence of a “P-Type” layer of cobalt oxide under structures of nickel hydroxide accelerates the movement of electrons, speeding up the production of hydrogen.
Source: Journal of the American Chemical Society
While still not there, the researchers estimate this could be improved significantly using their method.
Ultimately, a yield >10% is expected, without requiring any platinum or palladium, nor any elaborate infrastructure or a requirement for continuous power supply, with the production of hydrogen happening directly as soon as the Sun shines on the device.
Investing In Silicon Carbide Companies
ON Semi
ON Semiconductor Corporation (ON +0.37%)
ON Semi is a semiconductor company specializing in electrification, including in automotive, but also in other sectors like solar energy, batteries, aerospace, telecommunication, data centers, and medical.
As such, it is a key partner for many of the largest industrial companies in the world.
Source: ON Semi
A big part of ON Semi’s technological advantage is based on silicon carbide, a type of silicon-carbon compound used for high-energy electric systems. They notably allow for very high power loads required for the fast charging of EVs.
Silicon carbide is the chemical used recently by researchers to develop semiconductive graphene, as discussed in our article “Graphene Semiconductors – Are They Finally Here?” and as discussed here also has the potential for hydrogen generation.
ON Semi’s strategy of doubling down on silicon carbide led to the company experiencing a surge in revenues in the last few years, carried by the EV revolution.
Source: ON Semiconductor
Ever more powerful and efficient batteries and electric systems using silicon carbide are becoming increasingly important in the global supply chain. As a leader in the sector, ON Semi will likely benefit greatly from the electrification trend, especially EVs and other green energies.
(You can also read a longer write-up about this company in “On Semiconductor (ON): Silicon Carbide Powering Electrification”.)
Latest ON Semi (ON) Stock News and Developments
Study Referenced
1. Hui Zeng, et al. (2025) Manipulating Electron Structure through Dual-Interface Engineering of 3C-SiC Photoanode for Enhanced Solar Water Splitting. Journal of the American Chemical Society Vol 147/Issue 17. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.5c04005
