Exploring Synergistic Effects for High Performance Catalysts of Electrolytic Water Splitting

Duraisamy Senthil Raja¹, Shih-Yuan Lu^1*

¹Department of Chemical Engineering, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan

* Presenter:Shih-Yuan Lu, email:sylu@mx.nthu.edu.tw

Hydrogen plays a key role in deep decarbonization to tackle the two–degree–scenario (2DS) set by the Paris Climate Agreement. It has been proposed that decarbonization through hydrogen economy could achieve half of the reduction in carbon dioxide emission required to realize the 2DS. Presently, the most popular and economical commercial process for H2 production is steam–methane reforming, which uses fossil fuels as the raw material and produces comparable amounts of CO2 as the by–product. It is definitely an environmental unfriendly and a non–sustainable H2 production process, and development of green H2 production is in urgent need. In this regard, renewable energy driven electrolytic water splitting has been gaining rapidly increasing popularity and is considered by many the most promising green H2 production process for future hydrogen economy infrastructure. It is also considered a necessary energy storage approach to resolve the detrimental unreliability and intermittency issues of renewable energies. The high cost of electricity however severely limits the prevailing of this technology, and cost–effective highly efficient and stable electrocatalysts, aiming to reduce the necessary working potential for cost competitiveness, are critically important for the prevailing of the technology. Among the many existing approaches, engineering synergistic effects of multi-component catalysts is one key for breakthrough catalyst design. Here, I present several recent examples to illustrate the strategy.[1-3]

References
[1] Senthil Raja D, Chuah X-F, Lu S-Y. In situ grown bimetallic MOF as highly efficient bifunctional electrocatalyst for overall water splitting with ultrastability at high current densities. Adv Energy Mater 2018; 8:1801065.
[2] Senthil Raja D, Lin H-W, Lu S-Y. Synergistically well-mixed MOFs grown on nickel foam as highly efficient durable bifunctional electrocatalysts for overall water splitting at high current densities. Nano Energy 2019; 57: 1-13.
[3] Senthil Raja D, Huang C-L, Chen Y-A, Choi YM, Lu S-Y. Composition-balanced trimetallic MOFs as ultra-efficient electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution reaction at high current densities. Appl Catal B – Environ 2020; 279: 119375.

Keywords: electrolytic water splitting, hydrogen evolution reaction, oxygen evolution reaction, metal organic framework, electrocatalyst