Nano Catalysts for Water Electrolysis: The Importance of Catalyst Layer Conductivity

Humanity has been benefiting from the development of internal combustion engines for several decades. With the emergence and explosive increase of automobiles around 1980’s, there has been a demand for environmental catalyst technologies to process exhaust gases such as CO (carbon monoxide), NO_X(Nitrogen oxides). Since then, a significant amount of knowledge about catalysts to reduce the usage of precious metal catalysts, which play a crucial role in automotive applications, has been obtained, leading to the current research and development of single-atom and few-atom cluster catalysts. We have seen that the chemical potential of the material can be modulated by tuning the size, shape, and introducing supporting oxides to achieve low-mass loading, high performance environmental catalyst. In the future, the roles played by batteries and catalysts will become increasingly important, and there is a need for next-generation electrochemical catalyst technologies to produce energy carriers, including hydrogen, at a low cost.<br/>In this presentation, I will briefly review the knowledge of catalysts that we have accumulated since the rise of internal combustion engines and discuss the challenges and opportunities in electrochemical catalysis, with a specific focus on our research efforts in hydrogen production.