Executive Summary : | The need for clean and renewable energy is urgent, and the development of energy conversion and storage technologies like water electrolysers, fuel cells, batteries, and supercapacitors is crucial. The invention of new functional materials with desired electrochemical properties and stability is necessary to improve their efficiency and scalability for future use. Heterometal doping can enhance the intrinsic properties of active materials, leading to improved electrochemical activity. Heterometal phosphate materials have shown superior electrochemical performance, making them an ideal choice for replacing existing electrode materials. However, existing synthetic methodologies provide limited control over the M/P ratio and assembly. This proposal extends the SSP approach for synthesizing heterometal phosphate nanomaterials using suitable metal organophosphate complexes as starting materials. The alkyl groups on the phosphate ligands make these complexes thermally labile and organic-soluble, allowing their calcination at low temperatures to yield phase-pure metal phosphates in large-scale. This can be achieved by hybridizing two or more metal complexes of the same organophosphate ligand, followed by their decomposition at low temperatures to give homogeneous mixed metal phosphates. These nanomaterials can be used as active electrode materials for water electrolysis, fuel cells, batteries, or supercapacitors. Additionally, the metal phosphate embedded in a conducting matrix can be synthesized by calcining the molecular precursor under controlled conditions. The proposed proposal aims to optimize the formation of mixed metal phosphates using a simple, non-evasive thermolytic single source molecular precursor route and further study their electrochemical properties for energy conversion and storage technologies. |