Alternative Solar Energy

Commercially available solar panels are relatively efficient, so to speak, the silicon based solar cells yield around 35% of the sun's energy.However, they make the most energy when you are using the least energy. There may be another way though, rust usually is eradicated as soon as it shows up, but not any more! You can still sell off unused energy, but your well farmed energy cannot of course be stored.
In 1975, Kenneth Hardee, and Allen Bard worked together to try and get a current out of the cheapest metal they could find. They succeeded, they had managed to coax a current out of iron oxide. Although their plans had sense to them, they had not yet fully conducted tests, and they were not, I assume, ready to present their plans. Thus the breakthrough fell by the wayside, as silicon took the stage as the most efficient way to convert solar energy.
Now that people seem to be fed up with having energy at the wrong time, their eyes have been turned back to rust. Their idea wasn't stupid, in fact it was something surprisingly obvious, but impossible using silicon. It was the electrolysis of water! However, as I have said, electrolysis of water, would be impossible using silicon, this is because silicon's electrons require a charge of 1.1eV to jump free of their atom, meanwhile, the molecule H₂O requires a charge of at least 1.23eV to split into Oxygen and Hydrogen. Thus meaning silicon cannot perform electrolysis.
Iron oxide can, however, cause the electrolysis of water, this is because its electrons jump free of their atoms with a charge of 2.1eV, which is of course more than enough to split the water molecule.
There are however some other substances that require exactly the right charge for their electrons to jump free of there atoms, they are mostly lab made, and include exotic substances such as Zinc Selenide, and Platinum Catalysts, so they are far to expensive to sell commercially, but they may well be used in the years to come by rich companies, and space stations, this is because the lab made substances would be much more efficient at converting the sun's energy, they would yield around the same amount as current panels do (rust only farmed around 15% (maybe 20%) of the sun's energy), and because they would poses the exact charge, to split the water molecule, no energy would be wasted in the conversion.
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