Water splitting: Design, synthesis and fabrication of nanostructured materials based efficient electrodes for water splitting applications

Abstract The undecorated changes in the environment and increased energy demand affecting the traditional fossil fuels. The production of molecular hydrogen/oxygen using water splitting attracted the researchers globally. The presence of catalysts in the water splitting reactions plays a crucial role. There are two different reactions takes place which generated the hydrogen and oxygen on the water splitting process. The catalysts should have better redox ability for hydrogen evolution reaction and oxygen evolution reaction. Previously, different kinds of novel catalysts such as Ru, Ir, Pt and Au etc. were employed for the efficient water splitting process. These employed catalysts are precious therefore, it is required to design and fabricate the low cost catalysts for water splitting processes. The catalysts also control the kinetics of the hydrogen evolution and oxygen evolution reactions. Nanostructured materials are being used in various electrochemical applications such as batteries and supercapacitors. The employed nanostructured materials have shown excellent results in such devices. Therefore, researchers working on water splitting process have also employed nanostructured and other hybrid composites in water splitting applications. Hence, we have reviewed the recent advances in the development of electrodes for water splitting applications.