Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have come up with a way to produce hydrogen in a cost-effective manner.

They have targeted Sunlight and have invented a new technique by which hydrogen can be produced using the Sun's energy. For commercial level usage of hydrogen as a fuel, it is vital to come up with a way by which highly economical fuels like hydrogen can be produced in an affordable manner.

With the help of chemically driven reactions, chemical fuels can produce electricity. But cost of it is much more than the costs of using other sources of energy like fossil fuels.

"In order to make commercially viable devices for solar fuel production, the material and the processing costs should be reduced significantly while achieving a high solar-to-fuel conversion efficiency", said Prof. Kyoung-Shin Choi.

Cost-effective oxide-based materials were used by researchers. These materials made it possible for researchers to use solar energy to divide water into oxygen and hydrogen. The team was able to achieve solar to hydrogen conversion efficiency of 1.7%.

Choi shared that they were able to come up with a nanoporous semiconductor of a very tiny particles without the usage of any big equipments, high temperature or high pressure. Semiconductor has a high surface area, which means water splitting could be possible in a more efficient manner.

More work on the topic is needed so that the system can be improved. Choi said a number of things are to be done like hydrogen fuel cell manufacturing and large scale hydrogen extraction methods are needed to reach at certain level of maturity.