| Abstract: | Green hydrogen presents itself as a clean energy vector which can be produced by electrolysis of water by utilizing renewable energy such as solar or wind. Electrolysis of water has long been sought to be a sustainable and environmentally benign method of generating hydrogen (H2) as an ever-promising future energy vector. The oxidative half reaction at the anode, whereby molecular oxygen (O2) is produced, has restrictively constrained water splitting applications to higher overpotentials due to sluggish kinetics of the 4e- process and thermodynamically stable O-O double bond. To this extent, effective electrocatalysts have been developed to circumvent the constraints of the anodic oxygen evolution reaction (OER) via an array of catalyst groups including, but not limited to, earth-abundant transition metal oxides (TMO), oxyhydroxides, nitrides, phosphides, and sulfides. Although notably different, the overarching goal in rationally designing these anodic electrocatalysts is to lower overpotentials through attaining surface and bulk electronic structure modulations, reducing charge transfer limitations, and enhancing intrinsic activity by exposing more active sites. Significant work has been reported on cobalt-based electrocatalysts due to the favorable energetics atop the cobalt active sites for alkaline and near-neutral OER. This research focuses on the facile and swift fabrication of a S,B-codoped CoFe oxyhydroxide via solution combustion synthesis and evaluate the performance of the developed catalysts for OER. The electronic version of this dissertation is accessible from https://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/198516 |
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