Solar-driven, highly sustained splitting of seawater into hydrogen and oxygen fuels

Yun Kuang; Michael J Kenney; Yongtao Meng; Wei-Hsuan Hung; Yijin Liu; Jianan Erick Huang; Rohit Prasanna; Pengsong Li; Yaping Li; Lei Wang; Meng-Chang Lin; Michael D McGehee; Xiaoming Sun; Hongjie Dai

doi:10.1073/pnas.1900556116

Solar-driven, highly sustained splitting of seawater into hydrogen and oxygen fuels

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2019 Apr 2;116(14):6624-6629. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1900556116. Epub 2019 Mar 18.

Authors

Yun Kuang^{1

2

3}, Michael J Kenney¹, Yongtao Meng^{1

4}, Wei-Hsuan Hung^{1

5}, Yijin Liu⁶, Jianan Erick Huang¹, Rohit Prasanna⁷, Pengsong Li^{2

3}, Yaping Li^{2

3}, Lei Wang^{8

9}, Meng-Chang Lin⁴, Michael D McGehee^{7

10}, Xiaoming Sun^{11

3

4}, Hongjie Dai¹²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305.
² State Key Laboratory of Chemical Resource Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, China.
³ Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Soft Matter Science and Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, China.
⁴ College of Electrical Engineering and Automation, Shandong University of Science and Technology, Qingdao 266590, China.
⁵ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Feng Chia University, Taichung 40724, Taiwan.
⁶ Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Light Source, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA 94025.
⁷ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305.
⁸ Center for Electron Microscopy, Institute for New Energy Materials, Tianjin University of Technology, Tianjin 300384, China.
⁹ Tianjin Key Laboratory of Advanced Functional Porous Materials, School of Materials, Tianjin University of Technology, Tianjin 300384, China.
¹⁰ Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309.
¹¹ State Key Laboratory of Chemical Resource Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, China; sunxm@mail.buct.edu.cn hdai1@stanford.edu.
¹² Department of Chemistry, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305; sunxm@mail.buct.edu.cn hdai1@stanford.edu.

Abstract

Electrolysis of water to generate hydrogen fuel is an attractive renewable energy storage technology. However, grid-scale freshwater electrolysis would put a heavy strain on vital water resources. Developing cheap electrocatalysts and electrodes that can sustain seawater splitting without chloride corrosion could address the water scarcity issue. Here we present a multilayer anode consisting of a nickel-iron hydroxide (NiFe) electrocatalyst layer uniformly coated on a nickel sulfide (NiSx) layer formed on porous Ni foam (NiFe/NiSx-Ni), affording superior catalytic activity and corrosion resistance in solar-driven alkaline seawater electrolysis operating at industrially required current densities (0.4 to 1 A/cm²) over 1,000 h. A continuous, highly oxygen evolution reaction-active NiFe electrocatalyst layer drawing anodic currents toward water oxidation and an in situ-generated polyatomic sulfate and carbonate-rich passivating layers formed in the anode are responsible for chloride repelling and superior corrosion resistance of the salty-water-splitting anode.

Keywords: anticorrosion; electrocatalysis; hydrogen production; seawater splitting; solar driven.

Publication types

Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't