Electrocatalytic seawater splitting for hydrogen production: Recent progress and future prospects

Earth-abundant seawater resource has become an attractive candidate to produce hydrogen from elec-trolysis, which is of great significance to realize hydrogen economy and carbon neutrality. Nonetheless, developing highly active and stable electrocatalysts to meet the needs of highly effective seawater split-ting is still challenging for the sluggish oxygen evolution dynamics and the existed competitive reaction of chlorine evolution reaction (CER). To this end, some newly-developed electrocatalysts with superior performance, such as noble metals, alloy, transition metals, oxides, carbides, nitrides, phosphides, and so on, have been synthesized for the seawater splitting in recent years. This review starts from the historical background and fundamental mechanisms, and summarizes the most recent progress in the development of seawater electrolysis technologies. Some existing issues in the process of seawater electrolysis are enu-merated and the corresponded solutions are presented. The future of hydrogen production from seawater electrolysis, especially the design and synthesis of novel catalysts for seawater electrolysis, is prospected. & COPY; 2023 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of The editorial office of Journal of Materials Science & Technology.

Automated summary

Earth-abundant seawater resource has become a promising candidate for hydrogen production, but developing efficient electrocatalysts for seawater splitting is challenging due to slow oxygen evolution and competitive chlorine evolution reactions. Recent advancements in catalysts such as noble metals, alloys, transition metals, oxides, carbides, nitrides, and phosphides have been synthesized. This review provides a historical background, fundamental mechanisms, and the latest progress in seawater electrolysis technologies, addressing existing issues and presenting potential solutions. The future prospects of novel catalyst design and synthesis for seawater electrolysis are also discussed.