Organic Catalysis Promotor for Advanced Water Electrolysis

Abstract

AbstractAchieving carbon neutrality necessitates large‐scale water electrolyzers for green hydrogen production. Accordingly, it is emphasized to develop promising catalyst candidates, which can simultaneously achieve high catalysis efficiency, environmental friendliness, and sustainability. Recently, 3d‐transition‐metal–based catalysts are proposed to replace noble‐metal–based catalysts, which have limited reserves and emit CO2 during their production; however, the limited catalytic performance of 3d‐transition‐metal–based catalysts introduces a tradeoff. Therefore, in this work, the authors focus on suggesting a breakthrough that can intrinsically enhance the catalysis efficiency by adopting a new component in water electrolysis system. Here, a novel concept of organic catalysis promotor (OCP), dissolved in the electrolyte as an additive, which accelerates the sluggish oxygen evolution reaction in alkaline‐based water electrolysis, currently the most mature technology, is proposed. OCP acts as a liquid‐phase cocatalyst, decreasing the activation energy of oxygen evolution reaction by spontaneous chemical reduction to extract an electron from the reaction intermediates. This innovative approach of adopting the OCP of the 2,2,6,6‐tetramethylpiperidine‐1‐oxyl series significantly decreases the overpotential and shows successful general applicability, offering a new rudder in shifting the energy paradigm toward carbon neutrality.