Research Projects

Hydrogen is a promising alternative for clean energy applications, and water splitting is one of the best methods for producing pure hydrogen in a greener and viable way. Electrocatalytic water splitting consists of two half-cell reactions, hydrogen evolution reactions (HER) and oxygen evolution reactions (OER). However, the large overpotentials of OER and HER result in delayed reaction kinetics, limiting practical water splitting. A catalyst is needed to accelerate the reaction by lowering the electrochemical overpotential. Over the past two decades, noble metals (Ru and Ir) based electrocatalysts have shown great promise for water splitting behavior, but their high cost and global scarcity limit their usage for large-scale industrial applications. The development of cost-effective, earth abundant metal ions-based efficient electro-catalysts with minimized overpotential is crucial. Recently, the development of high-performance molecular catalysts for water splitting has been a topic of interest, as non-molecular substances are amorphous materials with no definite structure. The main focus of the proposal is to develop efficient water splitting molecular catalysts, ranging from high valent mononuclear Mn(IV), Fe(IV), Co(III) complexes to Cu(II) and Ni(II) complexes, homo-nuclear and hetero-nuclear clusters, mononuclear Ce(III) and Ce(IV) complexes, and mixed metal complexes. The synthesized molecular catalysts will be characterized by several spectroscopic techniques and investigated for their efficiency in catalyzing electrochemical water splitting reactions. The researchers are anticipating how well these molecular catalysts could behave as efficient electrocatalysts for clean energy applications.