IIT Mandi’s novel catalyst offers to make hydrogen more viable as fuel Premium

IIT Mandi researchers have developed a carbon-based non-metallic catalyst that reduces the overpotential of the oxygen evolution reaction, is easy to manufacture, and more stable than iridium and ruthenium during water electrolysis.

Researchers at IIT Mandi have developed a novel carbon-based catalyst to make water electrolysis more efficient, as well as being more stable and more affordable than other catalysts that perform the same function.

Water electrolysis is the process of choice to produce ‘green hydrogen’, so the new compound, and its underlying concepts, are also relevant to the prospect of this element as a fuel of the future.

The findings were published in the journal Carbon Trends in October 2022.

In water electrolysis, water molecules are split into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity inside a device called an electrolyser. However, this process consumes a lot of electrical energy.

A well-known solution is to use a catalyst to induce the water molecules to split at a much lower energy. The better catalysts are often based on the metals iridium and ruthenium, which are expensive, in great demand in other sectors, and not consistently stable as the reaction progresses.

In a new study, research groups of assistant professor Swati Sharma and associate professor Aditi Halder, both at  IIT Mandi, have reported a porous carbon material containing nitrogen that functions both as a catalyst and as the anode in electrolyser units – and could substitute the metal-based catalysts.

The researchers produced this material, called ‘laser carbon’, by exposing a sheet of a polymer called polyimide to a laser beam, which carbonised the exposed bits, leaving the remainder rich in nitrogen.