Design of Earth-abundant and Robust Water Splitting Electrocatalysts with Autocatalytic Feedback Mechanisms

2020 Fiscal Year Research-status Report

• Project/Area Number: 20K15388
• Research Institution: Institute of Physical and Chemical Research
• Principal Investigator: 李 愛龍 国立研究開発法人理化学研究所, 環境資源科学研究センター, 特別研究員 (30854682)
• Project Period (FY): 2020-04-01 – 2022-03-31
• Keywords: Electrochemistry / Water oxidation / Autocatalysis / Manganese

Outline of Annual Research Achievements

Fluctuation is an inherent nature of nature. Exploring the effect of fluctuation on chemical reactions will become an important and challenging topic for the scientific community. In my specific research “Electrocatalytic reactions for renewable energy storage”, the electrocatalyst is exposed to destructive perturbations from solar and wind, resulting system breakdown and failure. I developed an electrocatalytic water splitting system with environmental adaptability and self-healing capacity, based on the design of reaction networks. Regulation of the catalytic reaction network with MnO2 as a platform catalyst was made possible by taking advantage of its diverse linear and nonlinear redox reactions. Its multicomponent redox transformations were effectively interconnected by a charge disproportionation between MnVIIO4- and MnII to make it self-healing during processing OER under fluctuating conditions, as identified by continuous wave EPR, quartz crystal microbalance, Raman and UV-vis spectroscopies. An over 10-time prolonged lifetime (>1200 hours) was demonstrated for OER at 100 mA cm-2 in pH 2. The regulation of catalytic reaction networks not only allows us to guide and control the behavior of catalytic reactions, but is also an efficient strategy in renewable energy-material conversion systems for sustainability.

Current Status of Research Progress

1: Research has progressed more than it was originally planned.

Reason

The project was progressed smoothly and draw lots of attentions from the scientific research and industrial society. My firs work was summaried and sent for review. My second work was under preparation.
I also attend several online conference during the past year. Such as: PRIME2020: Joint international meeting of ECS, ECSJ and KECS (2020/10/04-09).
Hydrogen Online Conference: 24 hours of groundbreaking, up to date and inspiring content from experts and industry leaders. (2020/10/14)

Strategy for Future Research Activity

In this year, we will prepare more experiments results expecially in-situ experiment to support our concept. These experiment were planned to conduct in SPring8. After all experiment were done. I will finalized my second paper and sent to review.If possible, I also planned to attend several online conference during this year.

Causes of Carryover

The budget will finish this year to cover the experiments and traveling fee to SPring8.