Renewable Energy & Sustainability Heroes by GineersNow Engineering GineersNow Engineering Magazine Issue No. 017, Ren | Page 23

They were able to find these materials
through a combination of computational
and experimental methods. First, they used
a Materials Project Database to search for
potential compounds. They then narrowed
down the list by performing hundreds
of theoretical calculations through the
National Energy Research Scientific
Computing Center (NERSC), plus the
software and expertise from the Molecular
Foundry. Once they had a final list of
potentially useful materials, it was time to
test them in the lab.
These materials were all tested at the same
time for anode activity under different
conditions through high-throughput
experimentation. With this method, they
found that Vanadium, Oxygen, and another
element had a highly tunable electronic
structure which made them the best
candidates for water oxidation. They also
found 9 other elements that could be used
for this purpose as well, which brings the
list up to 12.
According to John Gregoire, one of the
research team leaders from Caltech,
this was the first time these kinds of
experiments were run this way. “The
key advance made by the team was to
combine the best capabilities enabled by
theory and supercomputers with novel
high throughput experiments to generate
scientific knowledge at an unprecedented
rate,” He added during the press release.
This research has finally given us a good
alternative to fossil fuels that could
potentially replace them on a large scale.
Hopefully, within a few years, fossil fuels
would be a thing of the past, and we would
all be using cheaper and greener sources
of energy.