The scale of renewable energy challenges not only calls for highly efficient photovoltaic (PV) or photoelectrochemical (PEC) technologies but also abundant, inexpensive, and robust materials. Earth-abundant but highly active electrocatalysts need to be developed to enable efficient and sustainable production of energy using electrocatalytic and PEC water splitting. We report nanostructures of earth-abundant electrocatalysts, such as exfoliated nanosheets of MoS2, WS2, MoSe2, for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and significantly enhanced their catalytic activity. We established nanotructures of ternary pyrite-type cobalt phosphosulfide (CoPS) as the best earth-abundant HER catalyst in acidic conditions to date. For oxygen evolution reaction (OER), NiCo and NiFe layered double hydroxides (LDHs) have been exfoliated into high surface area nanosheets to enhance their catalytic activity and trimetallic NiFeCr LDH with enhanced catalytic activity was discovered. These earth-abundant catalysts have been integrated with silicon and other semiconductors to enable efficient solar-driven hydrogen generation using earth-abundant materials.

Electrocatalytic and photoelectrochemical water splitting using earth-abundant catalysts

256th National Meeting (2018)

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