New electrocatalyst makes hydrogen more economically and efficiently

The team from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have reported their findings in Angewandte Chemie.

The most efficient electrolysers – which split water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen - use corrosive acids and electrode materials made of the metal compounds iridium oxide or ruthenium oxide. Iridium oxide is the more stable of the two, but iridium is one of the least abundant elements on Earth.

"Much of the previous work was performed with electrolysers made from just two elements - one metal and oxygen," said Hong Yang, a co-author and professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Illinois. "In a recent study, we found if a compound has two metal elements - yttrium and ruthenium - and oxygen, the rate of water-splitting reaction increased."

According to UIUC, Yao Qin, a co-author and former member of Yang's group, first experimented with the procedure for making this new material by using different acids and heating temperatures to increase the rate of the water-splitting reaction.