Executive Summary : | Irrespective of the economic and technical advantage of using fossil fuels for energy generation, the resulting environmental pollution due to the emission of hazardous gases is a critical side effect not only for India but also for the whole world. Hence, electrochemical energy devices are considered to have great potential in the field of energy generation/storage technologies. Despite the great potential of the electrochemical energy devices, the high cost, low-performance, and poor durability of the catalyst coated electrodes under operating conditions have precluded their overall efficiency. In most of the EEDs, approximately 60-80% of the cost comes from the catalyst-supported electrode part alone. Thus, the ultimate goal of the research proposal is to address these issues and to provide pollution-free energy with next-generation EEDs technology. For the advancement of electrochemical energy devices, the catalyst coated electrodes are continuously being explored by various National and international research groups to make the system viable and sustainable. Jaramillo et al. at Stanford University, USA is extensively exploring the novel catalytic materials for various electrocatalytic processes including mechanistic studies. Jaephil Cho et al. at the School of Energy Engineering and Chemical Engineering (UNIST), South Korea, is carrying out pioneering work in the field of the development of active and durable non-noble metal-based electrocatalysts for proton exchange fuel cells. The Pt-free catalysts studies are further being extended by the Klaus Mullen's group working at Max Plank Institute, Germany. The 3D printing technology is being extensively explored by Martin Pumera's research group (CEITEC, Czech Republic) showing its potential application towards electrocatalysis. In India several research groups are carrying out the electrocatalysts development-based research which has shown a great potential towards the application in high-performance energy devices, however, still, very limited effort had been made for the direct development of next-generation electrodes. The research groups at IISc, IITs, CSIRs, and IISERs and Industries (IOCL, TATA, RIL, etc.) work on the different aspects of the development of catalytic materials and devices engineering. Most of the research works are exploring catalyst development and device fabrication strategies. However, there are very few research groups that are involved in the direct development of highly efficient electrodes for various next-generation energy technologies. By looking at the present scenario of the development of non-noble metal or metal-free highly active and durable catalysts by different research groups in India, it is very clear that the proposed strategy in this research plan will help to easy and direct implementation of 3D-printed electrodes in a device will improve the overall performance by reducing the activation barrier and Ohmic losses. |