Hydrogen is one of the key clean fuels for transportation and storage. In a homogenous system hydrogen is generated by the reduction side of the reaction of photochemical water splitting. Even though noble metal systems are reported to be very effective. However suffer from limitations such as high cost and scarcity. In this context we have synthesized new non-noble metal 4,4'-diamino-2,2'-bipyridyl complexes and investigated their co-catalytic properties for hydrogen generation in aqueous media. Erythrosine B was employed as photosensitiser and triethanolamine (TEOA) as sacrificial electron donor. Firstly by studying the influence of rate of hydrogen evolution upon changing the concentration as co-catalyst the optimum concentration was determined to be 26.4 µM for Cu (II) complex [Image 1]. Followed by investigation of the effect of metal centre in the 4,4'-diamino-2,2'-bipyridyl based complexes. Cu (II) complex showed the highest photocatalytic activity for H<sub>2</sub> evolution compared to Ni (II) and Co (III) complexes [Image 2]. The mechanism of hydrogen production was elucidated by performing electrochemical studies.

Homogenous hydrogen evolution system employing non-noble metal bipyridyldiamine co-catalysts

255th National Meeting (2018)

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