Studies of Double Perovskite Catalysts for Photo Water Splitting

We are at a crossroads in our history. The dramatic climate change arising from human activity such as the burning of fossil fuels has had a devasting impact on human lives, the economy and the natural world. We need to act urgently to reduce emissions globally to limit further global warming. UK becomes first major economy to pass net zero emissions law. The new target requires the UK to bring all greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2050. Thus, how to reduce the CO2 emissions and utilize clean energy becomes a critical issue to realise the low carbon society. Solar-light-driven water splitting has attracted increasing attention, being considered as a promising approach to convert solar energy into chemical energy in the form of hydrogen fuel. Among various non-precious metal-based catalysts, double perovskite oxides are gaining an increasing amount of attention because of their low cost, compositional flexibility, and high intrinsic activity. However, the development of double perovskite photocatalysts is still in its infancy stage. This project aims to make improvements in photocatalytic performance of double perovskite with a focus on composition engineering and understanding the relationship between the structure and activity.
The proposed research includes rational synthesis, testing and characterization of double perovskite catalysts with controlled surface characteristics for photocatalytic water splitting for hydrogen production. The research will include catalyst materials synthesis, use of advanced in situ characterization methods such as X-rays diffraction, TPR, AP-XPS, TAS, TRPL and X-rays pair-distribution functions to evaluate the surface and bulk changes of catalysts during catalysis. Through the detailed studies a correlation between the structure and photocatalytic performance relationship rational design for effective catalysts can be established. This project is the natural result of the PI's expertise in the synthesis of new catalytic nanostructures and development of in-situ and operando spectroscopy and microscopy to characterise them under realistic conditions. The framework of the proposed work will be underpinned by extensive catalyst characterisation expertise and infrastructure at the University of Oxford. The project partners include Diamond Light Source at University of Oxford. This project falls within the EPSRC Catalysis research area in Energy Theme.