Tuning the catalytic activity of bifunctional metal boride nanoflakes for overall water splitting Veronica Sofianos 1 , Xu Lin, 1 Fu Boxiao 1 , Fatma Abdel Ghafar 2,3 , Debbie S. Silvester 2 1 School of Chemical and Bioprocess Engineering, University College Dublin, Ireland, 2 School of Molecular and Life Sciences,Curtin University, Australia, 3 Department of Evaluation and Analysis, Egyptian Petroleum Research Institute, Egypt, 4 Physics and Astronomy, Curtin University, Australia, 5 College of Chemical Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, China The world is in the process of transitioning towards a more sustainable energy future, with green hydrogen considered an attractive energy vector that can replace fossil fuel consumption, meeting global energy demands. To date, the most advanced method to produce green hydrogen is through water electrolysis using the residual supply of renewable energy. 1 The current state-of-the-art catalysts used in electrolyzers are platinum-based metals and ruthenium/iridium oxides. 2-4 The scarceness of these elements, combined with their high price, make these catalysts not economically viable for largescale production of hydrogen through water electrolysis. This study presents metal boride nanoflakes, such as CoB, NiB and MnB, as materials to be used in both the anode and the cathode of an electrolyzer for electrochemical water splitting over a wide pH range. The metal boride nanoflakes were synthesized by the chemical reduction of metal chloridesusing sodium borohydrideat three different concentrations to obtain metal boridenanoflakes. It was demonstrated that by tuning the properties of the metal boride nanoflakes, higher catalytic activities for both the hydrogen and oxygen evolution reaction can be achieved, showing good overall stability. References 1. Ghafar, F. A.; Etherton, D.; Liu, S.; Buckley, C. E.; English, N. J.; Silvester, D. S.; Sofianos, M. V., Tuning the Catalytic Activity of Bifunctional Cobalt Boride Nanoflakes for Overall Water Splitting over a Wide pH Range. Journal of The Electrochemical Society 2022, 169 (9), 096507. 2. Li, Y.; Zhang, H.; Xu, T.; Lu, Z.; Wu, X.; Wan, P.; Sun, X.; Jiang, L., Under-Water Superaerophobic Pine-Shaped Pt Nanoarray Electrode for Ultrahigh-Performance Hydrogen Evolution. Advanced Functional Materials 2015, 25 (11), 1737- 1744. 3. Wu, H.; Wang, Y.; Shi, Z.; Wang, X.; Yang, J.; Xiao, M.; Ge, J.; Xing, W.; Liu, C., Recent developments of iridium-based catalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction in acidic water electrolysis. Journal of Materials Chemistry A 2022, 10 (25), 13170-13189. 4. Reier, T.; Oezaslan, M.; Strasser, P., Electrocatalytic Oxygen Evolution Reaction (OER) on Ru, Ir, and Pt Catalysts: A Comparative Study of Nanoparticles and Bulk Materials. ACS Catalysis 2012, 2 (8), 1765-1772.
E03
© The Author(s), 2021
Made with FlippingBook Learn more on our blog