Date & Time: Sep 13 2024 | 11:30am - 12:30pm Location: Davison Life Sciences Building, Room C120 The seminar will focus on recent advancements in enhancing the efficiency of the Oxygen Evolution Reaction (OER) in water electrocatalysis. Three innovative approaches will be discussed: Se-doped FeOOH electrocatalysts, which demonstrate that selenium doping significantly enhances the OER activity of FeOOH, achieving an industrial-level current output of 500 mA cm⁻² at a low overpotential of 348 mV, and showing a high solar-to-hydrogen efficiency of 18.55%, making it a promising candidate for cost-effective and efficient hydrogen production; atomically dispersed nickel in porous carbon nanosheets, introducing a low-cost electrocatalyst composed of atomically dispersed nickel coordinated with nitrogen and sulfur species in porous carbon nanosheets, exhibiting excellent OER activity and durability with a low overpotential of 1.51 V at 10 mA cm⁻² and a small Tafel slope of 45 mV dec⁻¹, outperforming traditional Ir-based catalysts; and hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) as a co-catalyst, exploring the use of one-atom-thick hexagonal boron nitride as a co-catalyst, which significantly improves OER efficiency by encapsulating various electrocatalytic electrodes with hBN films, resulting in an ultralow Tafel slope of ~30 mV dec⁻¹ and a reaction current of ~2000 mA cm⁻² at an overpotential of ~490 mV, sustained for over 150 hours, with the hBN co-catalyst’s mass activity surpassing commercial catalysts by up to five orders of magnitude. These studies collectively highlight the potential of novel materials and strategies to develop highly efficient and cost-effective OER electrocatalysts for sustainable hydrogen production. Lu, Y.; Li, B.; Xu, N.; Zhou, Z.; Xiao, Y.; Jiang, Y.; Li, T.; Hu, S.; Gong, Y.; Cao, Y. One-Atom-Thick Hexagonal Boron Nitride Co-Catalyst for Enhanced Oxygen Evolution Reactions. Nature Communications 2023, 14 (1), 6965. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-42696-3. Hou, Y.; Qiu, M.; Kim, M. G.; Liu, P.; Nam, G.; Zhang, T.; Zhuang, X.; Yang, B.; Cho, J.; Chen, M.; Yuan, C.; Lei, L.; Feng, X. Atomically Dispersed Nickel–Nitrogen–Sulfur Species Anchored on Porous Carbon Nanosheets for Efficient Water Oxidation. Nature Communications 2019, 10 (1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-09394-5. (Niu, S.; Jiang, W.-J.; Wei, W.; Tang, T. K.; Ma, J.; Wan, L.-J. Se-Doping Activates FeOOH for Cost-Effective and Efficient Electrochemical Water Oxidation. Journal of the American Chemical Society 2019, 141 (17), 7005–7013. https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.9b01214. Type of Event: Materials Chemistry and Nanoscience Seminar Research Areas: Materials Chemistry and Nanoscience Ali Ahmed Department: Graduate Student, Department of Chemistry University of Georgia Learn more about the speaker https://chem.uga.edu/directory/people/ali-ahmed