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UCLA Researchers Use Solar To Create and Store Hydrogen (phys.org)
UCLA researchers have designed a device that can use solar energy to inexpensively and efficiently create and store energy, which could be used to power electronic devices, and to create hydrogen fuel for eco-friendly cars. Phys.Org reports: The device could make hydrogen cars affordable for many more consumers because it produces hydrogen using nickel, iron and cobalt -- elements that are much more abundant and less expensive than the platinum and other precious metals that are currently used to produce hydrogen fuel. Traditional hydrogen fuel cells and supercapacitors have two electrodes: one positive and one negative. The device developed at UCLA has a third electrode that acts as both a supercapacitor, which stores energy, and as a device for splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, a process called water electrolysis. All three electrodes connect to a single solar cell that serves as the device's power source, and the electrical energy harvested by the solar cell can be stored in one of two ways: electrochemically in the supercapacitor or chemically as hydrogen. The device also is a step forward because it produces hydrogen fuel in an environmentally friendly way. Currently, about 95 percent of hydrogen production worldwide comes from converting fossil fuels such as natural gas into hydrogen -- a process that releases large quantities of carbon dioxide into the air, said Maher El-Kady, a UCLA postdoctoral researcher and a co-author of the research. The technology is described in the journal Energy Storage Materials.
Hey, look at the bright side.
From the OP, we now know that the process of splitting water is called "water electrolysis".
That's the sort of information I come to Slashdot for!
A brief scan of the abstract, note that it uses "oxygen evolution reaction" with the acronym "OER" instead of "produces oxygen", uses LDH without defining it ("Layered Double Hydroxide"), "dual functionalities ... have been achieved" instead of "dual functions", or just "functions as both <a> and <b>",
Taking a sentence at random, and plugging it into an online analyzer results in:
Indication of the number of years of formal education that a person requires in order to easily understand the text on the first reading: (Gunning Fog index) 18.90
With a Flesch Reading Ease : 27.75
That's a pretty high level of jargon, almost reaching the level of techno-babble.
(The sentence: "When employed as the positive electrode in a supercapacitor, along with activated carbon as the negative electrode in an asymmetric configuration, the ultrathin and porous Ni-Co-Fe LDH nanoplatelets delivered an ultrahigh specific energy of 57.")