Research Projects

Water splitting involves two fundamental processes: hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER). For commercialization, OER and HER must be performed simultaneously for a prolonged time with high turn over frequency and low overpotential. OER is considered the bottleneck process of water splitting, and a robust and efficient catalyst is needed for it. The research group is actively working on designing inexpensive advanced materials, mainly with zeolite, polyoxometalate (POM), and metal organic framework (MOF), or a hybrid of these materials, as catalysts for electrocatalytic and photocatalytic water splitting. They have successfully synthesized and used various inorganic compounds as homogeneous and heterogeneous electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution and oxygen evolution reactions. This proposal focuses on developing photo-catalysts (mainly heterogeneous) and electrocatalysts (homogeneous as well as heterogeneous) for water oxidation to molecular oxygen and water reduction to molecular hydrogen. The global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use were estimated at 36.8 gigatons in 2017, and the United Nations committed to reducing CO2 emissions by 2004. The study of proton conductivity has made significant progress due to their high potential in fuel cell applications. This proposal aims to demonstrate extensive conductivity studies of proton conducting materials, including POMs and MOF, for fuel cell applications. The research also aims to explore POM as catholyte and anolyte in fabricating redox flow batteries, where homogeneous electrochemistry is an important factor.