Executive Summary : | Hydrogen production via water splitting is a promising approach for generating green hydrogen. Photoelectrochemical and electrocatalytic water splitting are two prominent methods for green hydrogen generation. The main challenges for commercial hydrogen production by water splitting is to use least energy consumption and mostly availing renewable energy sources without compromising with reproducibility, stability and performance of the catalyst applied. A reasonable amount of work has been done globally towards developing efficient electrodes for energy generation and storage. The expensive and time-consuming conventional methods to fabricate electrocatalyst or photocatalyst electrodes can be replaced with user friendly and cost-effective 3D printing techniques. Direct Ink Writing (DIW) and Fused deposition Modeling (FDM) techniques are the best methods for fabrication of customised electrodes for electrochemical devices. These techniques provide us freedom for choice of geometrical designing of electrodes, hence efficient microstructured electrodes can be printed using these techniques. As these techniques requires the designing of electrode using a computer aided software, so human errors can be reduced, and reproducibility can be increased. The ink composition in direct ink writing and filament composition in fused deposition modeling can be optimized to get higher conductivity and better catalytic performance. It is possible to achieve rationally organised porosity in electrodes synthesised using these techniques, which provides more active surface area for reaction and hence better performance. The proposed work explores the prospect of fabricating metal-based 3D printed electrodes for electrocatalysis and photoelectrochemical applications. |