The U.S. Department of Energy awarded the grant to UNR's Materials Nanotechnology Research Group to fund the project under the direction of Manoranjan Misra, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering.

The research group has developed titanium dioxide nanotube arrays for generating hydrogen by splitting water using solar light.

"We can put one trillion nanotube-holes in solid titanium oxide substrate approximately the size of thumbnails," Misra said of the new method to produce hydrogen energy in a more efficient manner than currently available in the marketplace.