eng Science and Education Publishing World Journal of Chemical Education 2375-1657 2021-11-28 9 4 190 196 10.12691/wjce-9-4-12 WJCE20219412 article Malte Petersen 1 Paul Worliczek 1 Johannes B. Max 2 Afshin Nabiyan 2 Manuel Wejner 2 Jonas Eichhorn 2 Carsten Streb 3 Felix H. Schacher 3 Timm Wilke timm.wilke@uni-jena.de 3 Chemistry Didactics, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany Institute for Organic Chemistry and Macromolecular Chemistry (IOMC), Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany Institute of Inorganic Chemistry I, Ulm University, Germany In current research, molecular light-driven catalytic units are linked to hierarchically structured soft matter matrices and used to convert solar radiation into chemical reactivity for photocatalytic water splitting. This article describes the development of a simplified hydrogen evolution reaction that transfers selected results to the student laboratory in a phenomenon-oriented manner. For this purpose, a photocatalytically active system - consisting of the catalyst titanium dioxide, the dye Eosin Y and the electron donor triethanolamine - is combined with two polymers as suitable matrices. A newly developed, low-cost hydrogen detector is used to quantify the hydrogen concentration. http://pubs.sciepub.com/wjce/9/4/12/wjce-9-4-12.pdf photocatalysis hydrogen evolution reaction photochemistry low-cost detection water splitting