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Due to the low conductivity of pure water, using an electrolyte is common forachieving efficient water electrolysis. In this paper, we have broken throughthis common sense by using deep-sub-Debye-length nanogap electrochemical cellsfor the electrolysis of pure water. At such nanometer scale, the field-drivenpure water splitting exhibits a completely different mechanism from themacrosystem. We have named this process 'virtual breakdown mechanism' thatresults in a series of fundamental changes and more than 10^5-fold enhancementof the equivalent conductivity of pure water. This fundamental discovery hasbeen theoretically discussed in this paper and experimentally demonstrated in agroup of electrochemical cells with nanogaps between two electrodes down to 37nm. Based on our nanogap electrochemical cells, the electrolysis current frompure water is comparable to or even larger than the current from 1 mol/L sodiumhydroxide solution, indicating the high-efficiency of pure water splitting as apotential for on-demand hydrogen production.

Virtual Breakdown Mechanism: Field-Driven Splitting of Pure Water for Hydrogen Production