Catalytic green energy production based on engineered active water innovatively prepared using sunlight-illuminated gold nanoparticles

Water is the most common solvent in our daily lives. This solvent has advantages of green environmental protection and low cost. Water is conventionally considered to be an inert solvent, yet it is relatively polar and can form a large number of hydrogen bonds (HBs). But this property also inhibits the dissolution of many non-polar gases, causing many important electrocatalytic reactions performed in it to have low efficiencies. In this work, we propose an innovative application of solar energy-generated active pure water (APW) with reduced HBs to enhance chemical reactions and physical procedures. Compared to conventional deionized water (DIW), the generated APW possessed a lower specific heat of ca. 0.96. The swelling degree of artificial skin in APW significantly increased by ca. 29%. Moreover, the density of an ethanol/APW solution significantly increased by 0.21% due to more free water molecules being available in APW to form stronger HBs with ethanol. Encouragingly, efficiencies of hydrogen evolution reactions performed in an APW-based acidic solution and oxygen evolution reactions performed in an APW-based basic solution significantly increased by 42% and 17%, respectively, compared to DIW-based solutions. The developed APW based on utilizing solar energy can create a more-effective green process.