Low-cost, durable catalyst for hydrogen production

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From pv magazine India

The future of hydrogen as a fuel lies in the design of efficient electrocatalysts for the electrochemical splitting of water to produce hydrogen. The commercially used Platinum (Pt)/Carbon (C) catalysts are efficient but expensive and suffer from metal ion leaching or electrocatalyst corrosion when used for extended periods.

Researchers from the Centre for Nano and Soft Matter Sciences (CeNS), under India's Department of Science and Technology, have developed a novel palladium-based electrocatalyst for hydrogen production that exhibits high catalytic efficiency. The catalyst is basically a partially reduced composite of coordination polymer and reduced graphene oxide (COP-rGO composite).

“The catalyst required an extremely low overpotential of -127 mV to achieve a current density of -10 mA/cm2 with a Tafel slope of 55 mV/dec,” the researchers said. “It also exhibited exceptionally high durability for 70 hours at a high current density of −300 mA/cm2.”

They added that the partially reduced COP-rGO composite can be readily synthesized by the reaction of 1,2,4,5-benzenetetramine (BTA) ligand with palladium (II) chloride (PdCl2) in the presence of rGO, and is therefore labeled as [Pd(BTA)-rGO]red. The presence of organic ligand, BTA, with four primary amine groups, aids in forming 2D COP sheets with Pd2+ ions.

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