Unraveling the Role of Defects in Electrocatalysts for Water Splitting: Recent Advances and Perspectives

Abstract

The development of highly efficient and robust electrocatalysts plays a crucial role in the success of sustainable energy conversion technologies, like electrochemical water splitting for hydrogen production. Defect engineering has been considered as an effective strategy to tune the electrocatalysts and enhance the activity. This review covers recent advances in engineering, probing, and understanding the defects in electrocatalysts toward the hydrogen evolution reaction and oxygen evolution reaction. In particular, the role of defects in electrocatalysts have been comprehensively discussed and summarized on the basis of both experimental results and theoretical calculations. We further provide a summary of the computational insight into the role of defects. Finally, we propose the critical challenges and corresponding future directions.

Tunable W5+ Absorbance in Laser Floating Zone Grown Bismuth Tungstate

“…Hyperspectral reflectance was measured to understand the change in color along with the impact of oxygen vacancies, given their previously mentioned modification of photocatalytic performance. ,− Plotting of the Kubelka–Munk transformation of the reflectance as a function of wavelength shows a broad overall increase in absorbance for the unoxidized sample between 400 and 800 nm. The sharp absorbance peak around 380 nm is present for all samples.…”

Electronic Structure Engineered Heteroatom Doped All Transition Metal Sulfide Carbon Confined Heterostructure for Extrinsic Pseudocapacitor

“…[27,28] However, excessive defects may influence the Fermi level and electronic structure, raising the material's electrical conductivity, which is beneficial for improving the overall electrochemical performance of the electrode. [29,30] As illustrated in the HR-TEM pattern in Figure 1f-h, the margins of the crystalline fringes are discontinuous, which might result in a significant number of defects. The lattice interplanar distance is precisely determined using digital microscopy software (Figure 1i).…”

Review and Perspective on Transition Metal Electrocatalysts Toward Carbon-Neutral Energy

“…This review provides novel aspects in the field of electrocatalysis and is distinct from other resources available in the literature. While there are many review articles that focus on aspects related to this current work, they tend to focus on either a specific catalyst classification, such as single atom catalysts, MOFs, noble metal alloys, or Cu-derived catalysts, or they focus on only one reaction of interest, such as water splitting, − CO 2 RR, ,− or NRR. , A review article that is similar to this one in terms of scope and catalyst structures studied is the work by Bhatt and Lee . Bhatt and Lee’s work focuses on providing an overview of theoretical developments for Pt-free and/or metal-free electrocatalysts for various electrochemical reactions for potential fuel cell applications.…”