Water can be split using photo-catalysis that uses solar power directly instead of electricity, but it’s less efficient since water only absorbs a small range of the light spectrum.

It’s been the lack of an efficient, low-cost catalyst for the oxygen molecules that’s been holding the full-scale extraction of hydrogen back. Up until now, oxygen catalysts have been based on scarce, expensive metals such as iridium, platinum, or ruthenium. Canadian Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the University of Toronto announced the discovery of a new oxygen catalyst gel based on iron, cobalt and tungsten that triggers an evolution reaction in oxygen three times faster than previous catalysts and retained stability through hundreds of reaction cycles.