Abstract
Water splitting to produce hydrogen gas, using renewably produced electricity (electrocatalysis) or by direct conversion of solar energy (photocatalysis), is a strategy that addresses key environmental and energy challenges. The overall water splitting reaction proceeds as two half reactions, namely the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), each of which require catalysts specifically tailored to maximize efficiency. The benchmark catalysts for the HER are noble metals. However, their expense and rarity makes them economically unfeasible for large-scale H2 production from water. Consequently, there are considerable efforts to find cheap, abundant materials that can efficiently catalyze the HER. Over the last decade, metal chalcogenides and phosphides have emerged as promising candidates for HER. In this review article, we discuss a selection of the multitude of studies and materials in these two classes of catalyst to give a flavor of the relevant developments and properties of these materials. In addition to the selection of catalyst materials, preparation and structuring are playing a strong role in enhancing HER and overcoming fundamental challenges. The role of modeling in the performance of HER catalysts is also discussed and we end with a short perspective on the key attributes of a good HER catalyst.
Highlights
The development of clean, renewable energy systems is of the utmost importance to address the issues of climate change and rising global energy demands
We describe non-oxide catalysts that show significant promise in the search for cheap, abundant, and efficient alternatives to noble metals for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER)
Noble metals have been widely studied for the HER and still act as a benchmark for any potential catalyst materials
Summary
With a rapidly rising world population, the global primary energy-consumption rate is expected to increase from 17 TW in 2010 to 27 TW by 2040 [1] Renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind, and wave energy, are intermittent and often location specific. These constraints necessitate an efficient means for storage and transport of excess energy produced at peak times for reintroduction to the grid where and as required. PGMs are critical materials with low abundance on earth, suffering from geopolitical issues around sourcing and are extremely expensive These issues limit the large-scale implementation and economic viability of water splitting technologies. An account of recent progress in this endeavor, to give the interested reader a perspective on the properties and HER activity of these non-metal oxide materials, is the subject of the present review
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