Ming Gong, student at stanford, discovers way to split H2O into H and O

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The nickel/nickel-oxide catalyst significantly lowers the voltage required to split water, which could eventually save hydrogen producers billions of dollars in electricity costs, according to Gong. His next goal is to improve the durability of the device.

"The electrodes are fairly stable, but they do slowly decay over time," he said. "The current device would probably run for days, but weeks or months would be preferable. That goal is achievable based on my most recent results"

The researchers also plan to develop a water splitter than runs on electricity produced by solar energy.

"Hydrogen is an ideal fuel for powering vehicles, buildings and storing renewable energy on the grid," said Dai. "We're very glad that we were able to make a catalyst that's very active and low cost. This shows that through nanoscale engineering of materials we can really make a difference in how we make fuels and consume energy."

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The discovery was made by Stanford graduate student Ming Gong, co-lead author of the study. "Ming discovered a nickel-metal/nickel-oxide structure that turns out to be more active than pure nickel metal or pure nickel oxide alone," Dai said. "This novel structure favors hydrogen electrocatalysis, but we still don't fully understand the science behind it."

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This has an enormous amount of applications:

EDIT:
Hydrogen Fuel cells run on hydrogen, which is highly flammable. Without an easy way to make hydrogen, you have to have a huge tank and logistical system to provide it. Tanks of hydrogen are basically bombs. With this, all you need is a tank of water. Presto, instant fuel, none of the nasty 'blow you up if you hit it wrong'.

This makes fuel cells much more economically viable. The only emission of a fuel cell is water vapor. Up until this point, one of the main problems with a FC car is the tank of hydrogen you'd have to carry around. Now, you could fill it up with your garden hose.

That's just one of them. But basically it makes fuel cells a real possibility for the future.