Executive Summary : | Electrochemical water splitting is a promising method for producing green and eco-friendly hydrogen fuel. Proton exchange membrane (PEM) water splitting is the most promising technology due to its small size, high efficiency, and high operational current densities. However, electrocatalysts designed for PEM show slow reaction kinetics in acidic electrolytes and poor stability. This proposal aims to design highly active and stable electrocatalysts using transition metals for acidic OER. Transition metal-based electrocatalysts are not stable and dissolve in acidic electrolytes, resulting in poor efficiency. The project aims to design noble metal-free electrocatalysts for water splitting in acidic electrolytes with high activity and stability. The industrial scale current density for water splitting will be achieved with low potential input. To increase the stability of transition metal-based electrocatalysts, acid-stable metals like Cr, V, Mo, Pd, Pb, etc. will be combined with Ni, Co, and Fe metals to create multi-metallic electrocatalysts with excellent stability for acidic water splitting. The project will also adopt hydrothermal and calcination methods for doping heteroatoms, alloying, hybrid nanostructure construction, and introducing conductive substances like N-doped carbon, carbon nanotube, and graphene in the catalyst structure. Extensive spectroscopic and microscopic characterization is crucial to evaluate the catalytic active sites for acidic oxygen evolution and hydrogen evolution. X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS), Raman spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) will be used to establish active catalytic sites and track the reaction mechanism. |