Precious Metal Free Materials As Efficient Catalysts for Water Splitting
Authors: Shen Pei Kang 
Published: February 2020

Precious Metal Free Materials as Efficient Catalysts for Water Splitting

Pei Kang Shen*, Zhi Qun Tian

Collaborative Innovation Center of Sustainable Energy Materials, Guangxi University

100 Daxue Road, Nanning 530004, Guangxi, China

*E-mail address: pkshen@gxu.edu.cn

Water electrolysis is a promising approach for large-scale and sustainable hydrogen production. However, its kinetics is slow and requires precious metal catalysts to efficiently operate. Therefore, great efforts are being undertaken to design and prepare low-cost and highly efficient catalysts to boost the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Currently, we developed different noble metal free materials as efficient catalysts for HER, OER, and full water splitting.

For HER, the catalysts with novel nanostructures were prepared, such as carbon-encapsulated WOx (WOx@C), N-doped porous MoN nanobelts, nitrogen and fluorine dual-doped porous graphene-nanosheets, K0.4TaO2.4F0.6 nanocubes, Ni3S2 nanowires, TiN nanowires, nanoflower-like MoO2, et al. For OER catalysts, the Mo- and Fe-modified Ni(OH)2/NiOOH nanosheets, nitrogen-decorated iron-nickel sulfide nanosheets, Mo-doped NiOOH nanosheets, tantalum dioxyfluoride, pristine carbon nanotubes, graphene supported MnO2 nanowires were studied. For full water splitting, the porous WO2 hexahedral networks, heteroatoms dual doped porous graphene nanosheets, three-dimensional porous MoNi4 networks, porous MoO2 nanosheets, dye functionalized carbon nanotubes were studied. The synthesized materials displayed excellent catalytic activity for hydrogen evolution, oxygen evolution, and full water splitting, and can be applied as low cost and highly active multifunctional catalysts with excellent ORR and OER performance.

The improved activity and active origin of aforementioned catalysts are clarified through experimental analysis and DFT calculation. These studies pave the way for the design and development of cheaper, highly efficiently and more durable catalysts for wider applications.

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