<h3>Title</h3>
<h3><span style="font-size: 12.16px;">Hydrogen Production from Water (via Photoelectrochemical Water Splitting) and Biomass Derivatives (via Aqueous Phase Reforming)</span></h3>
<p><strong><span style="font-size: 12.16px;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Abstract</span> :</span></strong></p>
<h2><span style="font-size: 11pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt;">Hydrogen production from renewable sources such as water and biomass derivatives, is a promising and sustainable way of storing energy in the form of chemical fuel on a large-scale. In this regard, photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting has been found to be a potential approach and therefore, has been extensively studied in recent years. The desired efficiency of &gt; 10% (STH) has already been achieved in laboratory scale. However, the stability of most of the suitable semiconductors (absorber layer in photoelectrodes) is a major issue due to the existence of corrosion potentials within the bandgap.</span></h2>
<h2>This talk presents the development of stable photocathode (for H<sub style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt;">2</sub><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; font-size: 11pt;"> evolution) and photoanode (for O</span><sub style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt;">2</sub><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; font-size: 11pt;"> evolution) devices based on Cu</span><sub style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt;">2</sub><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; font-size: 11pt;">O and CdS as the light absorber respectively. Inherent in the above statement is the development of low-cost, efficient, and robust protective layers for the devices in both substrate (device on Au-coated glass) and superstrate (device on F-doped SnO</span><sub style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt;">2</sub><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; font-size: 11pt;">, FTO-coated glass) configurations. Photoinduced conducting atomic force microscopy (</span><em style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; font-size: 11pt;">c</em><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; font-size: 11pt;">-AFM) reveals shunts and sub-bandgap states at the grain boundaries of the electrodeposited Cu</span><sub style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt;">2</sub><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; font-size: 11pt;">O. To minimize shunting, we developed a method to obtain larger grains of Cu</span><sub style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt;">2</sub><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; font-size: 11pt;">O via electrodeposition (two-step deposition) method. The Cu</span><sub style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt;">2</sub><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; font-size: 11pt;">O photocathodes were protected with electron selective layers of ALD-TiO</span><sub style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt;">2</sub><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; font-size: 11pt;"> (~ 10 nm) and CVD-Graphene, resulting in higher photocurrent (3 mA cm</span><sup style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt;">-2</sup><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; font-size: 11pt;">), twice that of a bare Cu</span><sub style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt;">2</sub><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; font-size: 11pt;">O electrode at 0.0 V vs RHE. The protected device shows a slow decay till 5-6 min and later, it generates stable photocurrent till 35 min of the experiment.</span></h2>
<h2>The photoanode was fabricated via a low-cost solution processing method in a core-shell structure for effective charge separation. The core, ZnO nanorods were optimized to grow sparsely such that the active absorber material, CdS can be loaded more in the interspace of the nanorods. A mesoporous (<em style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; font-size: 11pt;">m-</em><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; font-size: 11pt;">) NiO layer on top led to the mitigation of photocorrosion, acted as a cocatalyst to enhance the kinetics of oxygen evolution reaction, and provided a larger surface area at the electrode-electrolyte interface. The </span><em style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; font-size: 11pt;">m</em><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; font-size: 11pt;">-NiO coated photoanode resulted in a stable photocurrent of 2.15 mA cm</span><sup style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt;">-2</sup><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; font-size: 11pt;"> at 1.23 V vs RHE.</span></h2>
<h2>Apart from the above projects, this talk also includes the synthesis of an active and stable catalyst for Aqueous Phase Reforming (APR) of diol and polyol for H<sub style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">2</sub><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> production in fixed-bed and batch reactors. Pt, Ru on Al</span><sub style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">2</sub><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">O</span><sub style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">3</sub><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> and Ac-Carbon shows good activity. However, the metal nanoparticles agglomerate within a short period of time in the reaction condition, thereby slowing down the conversion rate. Use of </span><em style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">m</em><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">-Carbon as support may be a major focus of future study.</span></h2>
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