Abstract
Hydrogen is one of the most promising fuels for sustainable development in the future. Electrochemical water splitting is one of the important methods to generate hydrogen. However, the energy barrier (or overpotential) in the water splitting reaction is the prime obstacle for the development and application of water electrolysis and also brings heavy waste of electrical power in industry. To overcome this problem catalysts with high catalytic performance on hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) or oxygen evolution reaction (OER) are greatly demanded.In this thesis, the intrinsic electrocatalytic activity of carbon materials on water splitting was investigated and the activating mechanism proposed in previous reports was also revaluated with a systematic method. It was found that Pt transfer from the counter Pt electrode to the working electrode led to the activation of carbon as well as the high HER performance. Then Ni-based composites loaded on carbon cloth were prepared by a facile dip-coating method followed by annealing under different temperature. The structure, composition, and morphology of the composites were characterized by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), X-ray Diffraction (XRD), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS).
The electrochemical performance of Ni-based composites loaded on carbon cloth was investigated and the experimental results showed that Ni-based composites could show electrocatalytic activity both for HER or OER. The performanence of the samples was greatly affected by the annealing temperature in the preparation. Also the addition of Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) could efficiently improve loading efficiency of Ni composites as well as the catalytic performance for HER or OER, which was attributed to the formation of core-shell structure on the carbon cloth.
| Date of Award | 7 Dec 2015 |
|---|---|
| Original language | English |
| Awarding Institution |
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| Supervisor | Sai Tak CHU (Supervisor) |
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