Hydrogen Evolution Reaction with Sunlight for School Chemistry Education

In current research, molecular light-driven catalytic units are linked to hierarchically structured soft matter matrices and used to convert solar radiation into chemical reactivity for photocatalytic water splitting. This article describes the development of a simplified hydrogen evolution reaction that transfers selected results to the student laboratory in a phenomenon-oriented manner. For this purpose, a photocatalytically active system - consisting of the catalyst titanium dioxide, the dye Eosin Y and the electron donor triethanolamine - is combined with two polymers as suitable matrices. A newly developed, low-cost hydrogen detector is used to quantify the hydrogen concentration.