Chemical Sustainability Research theme Seminar

The annual production of hydrogen is over 70 million tons, with > 96% generated from fossil fuels (mostly by steam methane reformation of natural gas) releasing large quantities of CO2 as a by-product.  Electrochemical and photoelectrochemical water splitting technologies offer an important alternate platform to produce clean and sustainable hydrogen from surplus renewable energy.  Central to these technologies is the development of cost-effective materials with appropriate properties for driving the underlying electrochemical reactions.   

In this talk, we examine current state-of-the-art electrocatalysts employed for the electrochemical water splitting reactions (the hydrogen evolution and oxygen evolution reactions).  We will also explore the limitation of these precious-metal based catalysts and present our recent work towards lower-content and precious-metal free electrocatalysts.  For the hydrogen evolution reaction, we focus on our recent investigations regarding the first translation of a non-precious metal catalysts into a commercial scale polymer electrolyte membrane electrolyser.  For the oxygen evolution reaction, we explore strategies to develop lower-precious metal content catalysts – either by utilising cost effective supports or synthesising compounds and alloys of precious metals. We utilise highly engineered catalyst supports and prepare compounds and alloys containing transition metals with iridium and ruthenium structures.  Throughout our work we apply extensive materials characterisations towards understanding the role of catalyst structure, morphology and composition on electrocatalyst performance and stability.