Nanostructured Materials For Energy Application

Abstract

Recently, a new climate prediction was issued by World Meteorological Organization newline(WMO), stating that, There is a ~20% chance that one of the next 5 years will be at least newline1.5°C warmer than pre-industrial levels, but the chance is increasing with time. The heat newlinestress due to high surface temperature in the coming days would reach extreme affecting newlinehuman health, productivity, and mortality in many places on Earth Rising levels of CO 2 newlinein the ocean causing huge proliferation of toxic algae, which is a potential threat to newlinemarine life, coastal communities, aquaculture and fisheries and of course human health. newlineThe ocean absorbs CO 2 at a rate of 22 million tons per day as revealed by the National newlineOceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Increased acidity of the ocean s surface water newlineresulting in the dissolution of shells and skeletons causing the extinction of numerous newlinespecies. An effort to obtain sustainable and clean energy, using electrocatalytic hydrogen newlinegeneration reactions and oxygen evolution reactions could be potential solutions towards newlineenvironmental degradation. In this regard the present thesis is focused on the formation of newlinetransition metal based heterostructures of metal phosphide, nitride, sulphide, oxide, newlinesingle-atom catalyst (SACs), Metal-organic organic framework (MOF) and MOF-derived newlinematerials for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and newlineoxygen reduction reaction (ORR). The first heterostructure we worked on is newlineCoatNCatMoS 2 for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in which the synergistic effect newlinebetween CoatNC nanoparticles and MoS 2 nanosheets enhances the catalytic activity. The newlinecatalyst exhibit the overpotential of 297 mV at 10 mA cm -2 of current density. Moving newlineforward we worked on transition metal oxide heterostructures and we developed CuO- newlineNiO, Co 3 O 4 -NiO heterostructure for OER with overpotential of 231 mV and 311 mV and newlineNiWO 4 -NiO heterostructure for HER with overpotential of 71 mV. Further, taking the newlineadvantage of high electronegativity of metal fluorides we fa