Earth-Abundant Electrocatalytic Material for Electrochemical Water Splitting

Platinum and platinum group materials are commercially popular and well literature known electrocatalyst materials for overall water splitting. However, the low abundance and high cost of these materials restrict them from widespread electrocatalytic applications. Hence, the scientific community has shifted its focus to highly active, stable, and cost-effective earth-abundant electrocatalyst material for efficient electrochemical water splitting. In earth-abundant materials, low-cost transition metals are more popular and possess remarkable catalytic activity, which makes them suitable candidates for replacing noble metals. This chapter provides a comprehensive survey of recent progress in earth-abundant materials as electrocatalysts for electrochemical water-splitting applications. It systematically covers the synthesis methods and performance evaluation of low-cost transition metal-based materials such as metals, bimetals, tri metals, oxides, hydroxides, borides, phosphides, carbides, nitrides, chalcogenides, etc. The advantages and limitations of these categories, their compositions, and synthesis methods on catalyzing both the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Furthermore, it covers the diverse strategies aimed to enhance the catalytic activity and stability of these materials. Ultimately, challenges and outlooks are proposed for constructing earth-abundant electrocatalytic material for HER, OER as well as in bifunctional mode. It also summarizes the recent developments and achievements in these materials an electrochemical point of view for overall water splitting, strategies towards performance enhancement, a study in concern with stability, and progress towards the practical replacement of platinum and platinum group noble material with these cost-effective earth-abundant materials. It also gives future insights into electrocatalytic materials for efficient and sustainable electrochemical water splitting.