(Invited) Exploring Synergistic Effects for High Performance Catalysts of Electrolytic Water Splitting

Hydrogen plays a key role in deep decarbonization to tackle the two–degree–scenario (2DS) set by the Paris Climate Agreement. It has been proposed that decarbonization through hydrogen economy could achieve half of the reduction in carbon dioxide emission required to realize the 2DS. Presently, the most popular and economical commercial process for H2 production is steam–methane reforming, which uses fossil fuels as the raw material and produces comparable amounts of CO2 as the by–product. It is definitely an environmental unfriendly and a non–sustainable H2 production process, and development of green H2 production is in urgent need. In this regard, renewable energy driven electrolytic water splitting has been gaining rapidly increasing popularity and is considered by many the most promising green H2 production process for future hydrogen economy infrastructure. It is also considered a necessary energy storage approach to resolve the detrimental unreliability and intermittency issues of renewable energies. The high cost of electricity however severely limits the prevailing of this technology, and cost–effective highly efficient and stable electrocatalysts, aiming to reduce the necessary working potential for cost competiveness, are critically important for the prevailing of the technology. For catalyst development, unary systems have been exhaustively explored and multi–component systems have advanced drastically, benefitting from the synergistic effects between constituent components. Engineering synergistic effects of multi-component catalysts is thus one key for breakthrough catalyst design. Here, several recent examples from our lab are presented to illustrate the strategy.