Electrolyte-free fuel cell: Principles and crosslink research

Semiconductors and the associated methodologies applied to electrochemistry have recently grown as an emerging field in energy materials and technologies. Fuel cells have been developed in line with traditional electrochemistry employing three basic functional components: anode, electrolyte and cathode. The electrolyte is a key component to the device performance by providing an ionic charge flow pathway between the anode and cathode but preventing electron conduction. By contrast, semiconductors and the derived heterostructures with electronic (hole) conducting materials have been strongly developed with much better ionic conductors instead of a conventional ionic electrolyte for novel fuel cells. Energy band structures and alignments, band-bending and built-in-field are all important parameters in this context to accomplish the necessary fuel cell functionalities. This chapter extends widely the semiconductor-based electrochemical energy conversion and storage technologies, describing their fundamentals and working principles, with an intention to advance the understanding of the semiconductors and energy bands role in electrochemical devices of energy conversion and storage, as well as applications for emerging demands, widely involving in energy applications, such as photo catalysis/water splitting; battery and solar cell etc. It provides new ideas and new solutions to the problems beyond the conventional electrochemistry and presents new inter-disciplinary approaches to develop clean energy conversion and storage technologies.