Springer Theses - David J Martin | Faculty of Engineering

Solar water splitting using an inorganic semiconductor photocatalyst is viewed as one of the most exciting and environmentally friendly ways of not only producing clean renewable hydrogen fuel from abundant resource water but also reduction of CO2 emission. David Martin supervised by Dr Junwang Tang focused on developing novel photocatalysts for efficient water photooxidation, reduction and overall water splitting, resulting into nearly unity internal quantum yield at 420 nm for water oxidation to O2 gas by tetrahedral Ag3PO4 and a quantum yield of 26% at 400 nm for water reduction to H2 by urea-derived carbon nitride. Furthermore overall water splitting has been demonstrated using a double excitation system comprising of a hydrogen evolution photocatalyst and oxygen evolution photocatalyst. Because of these novel results, David received the 2015 Springer Thesis Award.