(154b) Synergistic effect of non-precious metals with carbon nanospheres for highly efficient water electrolysis.

With a rising global population, increasing energy demands, and impending climate change, major concerns have been raised over the security of our energy future. Hydrogen is considered to be a promising energy carrier toward sustainable development. Water electrolysis is a clean and efficient way to produce hydrogen. However, the production of hydrogen is limited due to the high overpotential of electrolytic water. At present, Pt-based materials are the most popular electrocatalyst for HER, but usually suffering from rare source materials and high price. Therefore, the development of cheap and efficient electrolytic water catalyst is the key to widen the application of hydrogen.
The most ideal state of electrolyzed water is performing HER and OER simultaneously under alkaline conditions. Research shows that Mo-based and W-based catalysts have high activity of HER while Fe, Co, V etc. have been proved to be highly efficient active sites for OER. Besides, the doping of metallic elements or nonmetallic elements can optimize the catalytic activity of metals by regulating the internal electronic structure of metals.
Based on the above research, the project plans to improve the intrinsic activity of the active site through element doping. In addition, carbon nanospheres are used as the carrier, and the active sites are loaded on the carbon spheres by high temperature calcination to effectively prevent the aggregation of active sites, and form a stable graphene protective film to improve the stability of the catalyst. And then, to develop a cheap, efficient and stable electrolytic water catalyst.