Low Cost, Bifunctional Electrocatalyst for Water Splitting

Stanford researchers have developed and tested a low cost, bifunctional water splitting catalyst that outperforms conventional catalysts. The inexpensive Ni₃FeO_x nanoparticle facilitates both the oxygen and hydrogen evolution reactions, simplifying electrolysis deployment and scale up. The approach improves transition metal oxides/chalcogenides performance in reactions crucial to renewable energy production such as hydrogen production, CO₂ reduction, and methane oxidation. This inexpensive catalyst could make water splitting, renewable energy production, rechargeable metal-air batteries and fuel cells commercially viable.

Stage of Research
Researchers tested various nanoparticle morphologies of the bifunctional electrocatalyst (applied to carbon fiber paper) against conventional catalysts, Pt and Ir. With the input of a 1.5V battery the bi-functional catalyst split water continuously for a week at 82% efficiency. The conventional catalyst performance degraded to 65% efficiency after only 24 hours.

Figure 1 Catalyst performance comparison of conventional Ir and Pt, and Ni₃FeO_x catalysts.
The 2-cycle catalyst has more grain boundaries, more active reaction sites.