Electrochemical Water Splitting Catalysts with Nanostructure
Hydrogen production by electrochemical water-splitting is a very promising method and a key technology for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. It is also important to support the application of intermittent and fluctuating renewable solar and wind power. Conventional electrolyzers for water splitting employ expensive catalyst such as Pt, which in turn causes high cost of electrolyzers.
Pt-freecatalyst heterostructured CoP@a-CoOx plate is designed, which consisting of the embedded crystalline cobalt phosphide (CoP) nanoclusters and amorphous cobalt oxides (CoOx) nanoplates matrix for use as oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). It is found that the composite material exhibits comparable activity with the traditional Pt-based catalyst but the use of Pt is reduced to zero (reduced the cost substantially). In addition, the developed catalyst exhibits good stability for hydrogen and oxygen production by water splitting.
The technology can be applied for hydrogen and oxygen production at large scale, which allow the use of excessive solar and wind power for hydrogen generation to support the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle development.