Trend of Photo-Electrochemical Hydrogen Production Technology

Hydrogen is clean and renewable, and recognized as a very promising energy resource to solve both depletion of petroleum and environmental problems caused by the use of fossil fuels. Extensive researches have been performed worldwide on the production technologies of hydrogen. In this paper, the technology trend of photo-electrochemical (PEC) hydrogen production was scrutinized based on the patent and paper analysis. Open/registered patents of US, JP, EP, and KR and SCI Journals related to the PEC hydrogen production technology between 1996~2010 were reviewed. Patents and papers were gathered by using the key-words searching method and filtered by desirable filtering criteria. The technology trend was discussed by classifying each patent and paper based on the publishing year, country, and organization, and analyzing the core patents and papers.