Recent research in hydrogen production has begun to investigate catalysts which use cheap or widely available metals, as current catalysts which use rare earth metals are too expensive for wide use. Nickel compounds with mixed N,S ligands have been shown to produce hydrogen gas in both electrochemical and photocatalytic systems. However, while some nickel N2S2compounds have been shown to successfully generate hydrogen in both electrochemical and photochemical systems, they operated at significant overpotentials and in some cases decomposed into NiSx nanoparticles. For this study, three nickel(II) complexes based on the thiasalen structure were investigated for their proton reduction capability. All three compounds were shown to electrochemically produce hydrogen. [Ni(tsalen)] (tsalen=N,N'-ethylene-bis(thiosalicylideneimine)) operated at the lowest overpotential with onset potentials at -1.4 V Vs SCE. The other two compounds [Ni(tsaltol)] and [Ni(tsalphen)] (tsaltol =N,N'-phenylene-bis(thiosalicylideneimine), tsalphen=4-methyl-1,2-phenylene-bis(thiosalicylideneimine)) both had more negative potentials despite the increased delocalization on the ligand backbone. [Ni(tsaltol)] was a novel compound was completely characterized. Each complex was also invested for its activity in light-driven systems.

Nickel complexes with N2S2 ligands for electrocatalytic and light-driven production of hydrogen

255th National Meeting (2018)

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