Research Projects

The depletion of conventional fossil fuels in an unusually rapid rate concerns the environmental hazards due to the use of carbon emitting fuels, which compelled the researchers to urgently look for a more stable and sustainable alternative energy source. Hydrogen has garnered widespread attention as a zero carbon emission, clean and green energy carrier, zero CO2 and other pollutant emission advantages.1 Hydrogen generation is now mostly reliant on fossil fuel steam reforming, which produces CO2 in addition to H2. It is a non-renewable source and not environmentally friendly due to the generation of CO2. In other hand, water electrolysis has received more attention as a substitute than steam reforming. Electrochemical water splitting has been considered as one of the promising ways to produce hydrogen to alleviate the escalating fossil fuel crises and clean energy without any harmful emission. Electrolysis of water consists of two half reactions such as hydrogen evolution reaction (HER)2 i.e., reduction of H+ ion to H2 at cathode (2H+(aq) + 2e− → H2(g)), and oxygen evolution reaction (OER)3 i.e., O2 generation at anode (2H2O(l) → O2(g) + 4H+(aq) + 4e−) and overall water splitting requires a minimum voltage of 1.23 V. The important issues to overcome the use of costly noble metals such as Pt for HER4 and IrO2, RuO2 for OER5 and required splitting energy around 1.5-1.6 V for laboratory catalysts and industrial catalysts such as Ni (HER) and stainless steel (OER) required splitting energy more than 1.8-2.0 V.6 The most well-known electrocatalysts are transition metal oxides, chalcogenides, hydroxides for OER7-9 and phosphides, sulphides, selenides, nitrides, carbides for HER.10-14 However, various performance factors such as low overpotential, high current density, stability, and cost of the electrocatalyst are associated with the performance of water splitting that forces to design a better electrocatalyst. Anisotropic nanoparticles possess multi-site functionality and activity due to the presence of different planes in their vertices, edges, and facets. To overcome such issues, this project targets the synthesis of low-cost, multi-faceted anisotropic nanomaterials for effective water splitting. This project aims at an efficient water splitting using non-precious multi-site anisotropic electrocatalysts. In this proposal, simple, cost-effective, efficient, and less time-consuming strategies for the controlled synthesis of anisotropic nanostructures of non-noble metals with various shapes and doping with S/Se/Te/P, and the fundamental investigations into these engineered multi-site nanoparticles for water splitting. Focusing on recent developments in nanostructure design, controlled fabrication, and mechanistic understanding to improve electrocatalytic performance. The shape-controlled nanostructures with various morphologies are expected to have a great impact on electrocatalytic water splitting.

OER; HER; Water splitting