TiO₂/ZrO₂ Nanoparticle Composites for Electrochemical Hydrogen Evolution

Abstract

Composites of different semiconductors are found to show much improved electronic conductivity and decreased charge transfer resistance. In this work, this hypothesis is tested by preparing composite heterostructures of chemically and structurally dissimilar and wide-bandgap semiconductors, titania (TiO2) and zirconia (ZrO2). Herein, the underpotential hydrogen generation ability of the composite nanoparticles is studied for the first time. The dissimilarity in coordination can create charge imbalance once the composite of these two materials is formed, which in turn can increase the surface acidity and the active sites for proton adsorption as proved through various analytical techniques. The composite of separately incompetent hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) catalysts shows improved HER activity due to improved charge transfer between the composite catalyst and reactant caused by the generation of the new electronic states. To improve the electronic conduction, we have performed the reduction of TiO2/ZrO2 binary metal oxide composite, which results in oxygen vacancies in the composite. The reduced counterpart of the composite is found to possess semimetallic properties and shows outstanding high stability and 7 times increase in HER current density at −0.6 V along with a very small overpotential of only ∼160 mV penalty to have a HER current density of 10 mA/cm2.

Hierarchical CoNiO2 Microflowers Assembled by Mesoporous Nanosheets as Efficient Electrocatalysts for Hydrogen Evolution Reaction

“…It may also be advantageous to improve performance by taking advantage of the synergistic effects of bimetallic electrocatalysts. Singh et al reported that the B-TiZr-2.5 catalyst has improved HER activity [ 22 ]. It is recognized that the single metal catalyst is not enough to make the HER catalyst active.…”

Increasing the performance of an anion-exchange membrane electrolyzer operating in pure water with a nickel-based microporous layer

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Elucidating the Performance Limitations of Alkaline Electrolyte Membrane Electrolysis: Dominance of Anion Concentration in Membrane Electrode Assembly

“…Electrolytic production of hydrogen from water as an alternative energy carrier to fossil fuels has attracted a plethora of attention in the context of sustainability, renewable energy source utilization and green technology . Currently, there are two main types of low‐temperature water electrolysis available for commercial deployment: conventional alkaline water electrolysis (AWE) and proton exchange membrane water electrolysis (PEMWE) .…”