Physical Basis of Multi-Energy Coupling-Driven Water Oxidation

Abstract

Hydrogen production by electrolyzing water is an important technique to store energy from renewables into chemical energy. Many efforts have been made to improve the energy conversion efficiency. In this review article, we mainly summarized the emerging ideas on water oxidation by multi-energy coupling. First, the physicochemical nature of electrolyzing water reaction is described. Then, we conceptually proposed the physical basis of energy coupling with a goal to maximize the energy conversion efficiency and showed the methods to achieve heat–electricity and magnetism–electricity coupling to drive water splitting. Finally, the material requirements for creating efficient energy coupling water splitting system were proposed. These new ideas unlock a big potential direction for developing multi-energy coupling hydrogen production devices to efficiently store the intermittent and fluctuating renewables.

Heat-Induced Magnetic Transition for Water Electrolysis on NiFeN@NiFeOOH Core–Shell Assembly

“…This means that minimizing the barriers of the two electron transfer processes is an effective route to accelerate water splitting. That is, an efficient heat-electricity coupling process would be a fact that the heat and electricity act together to change the electronic chemical potential of the system via a given heat-induced physical effect …”