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Alloy Could Produce Hydrogen Fuel Using Sunlight
intellitech writes "Using state-of-the-art theoretical computations, a University of Kentucky-University of Louisville team demonstrated that an alloy formed by a 2 percent substitution of antimony (Sb) in gallium nitride (GaN) has the right electrical properties to enable solar light energy to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, a process known as photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting. When the alloy is immersed in water and exposed to sunlight, the chemical bond between the hydrogen and oxygen molecules in water is broken (abstract). Because pure hydrogen gas is not found in free abundance on Earth, it must be manufactured by unlocking it from other compounds. Thus, hydrogen is not considered an energy source, but rather an 'energy carrier.' Currently, it takes a large amount of electricity to generate hydrogen by water splitting. As a consequence, most of the hydrogen manufactured today is derived from non-renewable sources such as coal and natural gas. The team says the GaN-Sb alloy has the potential to convert solar energy into an economical, carbon-free source for hydrogen."
How many of these are going anywhere years later?
Most aren't. Some are. That's pretty much the way R&D works: most projects fail, but the ones that succeed change our lives, generally for the better. If you're not interested in hearing about the early stages, when success or failure is impossible to predict, that's fine; no one's making you read those stories.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Imagine you're stuck in the desert with a bottle of water... you have to take a pick whether you drink your water or pour it in your car
Easy answer really. Drink your water and pee on your car.