Electrocatalytic Self-Assembled Nanoarchitectonics for Clean Energy Conversion Applications

Abstract

The general trends in the construction of highly active electrode devices are focused on the science of materials. These are useful for developing 2D nanostructured electrodes, with well-defined active sites, which are excellent approaches for understanding the fundamentals of electrocatalytic reactions. Here we present an overview of the experimental self-assembled molecular catalyst configurations to develop excellent electrode materials containing molecular catalysts for energy conversion device applications. First, by applying well-known reactivity descriptors for electrocatalysis, nanoarchitectonics, and the self-assembled concept, we summarize the main molecular building blocks to achieve a technology system for arranging by a rational design, nanoscale structural units configuration that promotes electrocatalytic reactions such as oxygen reaction reduction (ORR) and water-splitting reactions. We focus the discussion on the MN4 molecular catalyst linked to electrode surfaces with the help of the axial blocks, bio-inspired self-assembled approaches such as biomimetic models of metalloenzymes active sites, and molybdenum sulfide clusters for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). We briefly discuss the advantages of developing host-guest self-assembled molecular catalyst systems based on cyclodextrins anchored to electrodes to get well-defined active sites with local environment control.