Nano‐Sized Inorganic Energy‐Materials by the Low‐Temperature Molecular Precursor Approach

Abstract

The low-temperature synthesis of inorganic materials and their interfaces at the atomic and molecular level provides numerous opportunities for the design and improvement of inorganic materials in heterogeneous catalysis for sustainable chemical energy conversion or other energy-saving areas. Using suitable molecular precursors for functional inorganic nanomaterial synthesis allows for facile control over uniform particle size distribution, stoichiometry, and leads to desired chemical and physical properties. This Minireview outlines some advantages of the molecular precursor approach in light of selected recent developments of molecule-to-nanomaterials synthesis for renewable energy applications, relevant for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER), hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), and overall water-splitting.

Detecting structural transformation of cobalt phosphonate to active bifunctional catalysts for electrochemical water-splitting

“…Electrochemical energy conversion by splitting water into O 2 and H 2 may become pivotal in providing clean and sustainable energy replacing fossil fuels. [1][2][3] The water-splitting process comprises of two half-cell reactions-oxygen evolution reaction (OER) at the anode and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) at the cathode. [4][5][6] Water splitting is a thermodynamically uphill reaction and electrolysis of water requires a huge amount of energy in terms of potential.…”

A soft molecular 2Fe–2As precursor approach to the synthesis of nanostructured FeAs for efficient electrocatalytic water oxidation

“…In this context, an effective pathway to synthesize independently amorphous and crystalline nanostructured materials has emerged in the last few years that utilizes the low-temperature decomposition of molecular single-source precursors (SSPs). 22,[29][30][31] Molecular systems enable the adjustment of dened transition-metal to heteroatom ratios of the desired material by manipulation of the synthetic conditions, which is hardly achievable by conventional solidstate, hydrothermal and solvothermal strategies. We have previously isolated several well-dened molecular complexes, containing TM chalcogenide or pnictide cluster cores stabilized by b-diketiminato ligands (L ¼ CH(CRNAr) 2 with R ¼ alkyl and Ar ¼ aryl) and some of them have been used as SSPs for catalytic water-splitting applications.…”

Amorphous outperforms crystalline nanomaterials: surface modifications of molecularly derived CoP electro(pre)catalysts for efficient water-splitting

“…28 To prevent this, new synthetic strategies like the low-temperature molecular SSP approach are used, showing several advantages, foremost a better control of the composition and size distribution of the resulting nanomaterial, which can be varied depending on the experimental conditions. 29 Recently, this synthetic method has been applied to access a broad range of high-performance electrocatalytic OER, HER and OWS materials, including chalcogenides 30 and pnictides. 31 Examples of preparation of crystalline cobalt phosphides by the SSP approach either for the HER or for the OER and/or OWS electrocatalysts are limited [32][33][34] and access to amorphous cobalt phosphide phases by the SSP approach towards OWS remains unexplored.…”