Non-precious-metal catalysts for alkaline water electrolysis: operando characterizations, theoretical calculations, and recent advances

Recent years have witnessed an upsurge in the development of non-precious catalysts (NPCs) for alkaline water electrolysis (AWE), especially with the strides made in experimental and computational techniques. In this contribution, the most recent advances in NPCs for AWE were systematically reviewed, emphasizing the application of in situ/operando experimental methods and density functional theory (DFT) calculations in their understanding and development. First, we briefly introduced the fundamentals of the anode and cathode reaction for AWE, i.e., the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), respectively. Next, the most popular in situ/operando approaches for characterizing…

• NN
  National Natural Science Foundation of China

  Awards: 51676189, 52006124
• CA
  Chinese Academy of Sciences

  Award: 182211KYSB20160043
• NR
  National Research Foundation of Korea

  Awards: NRF-2018M1A2A2063868, NRF-2019M3E6A1065102, NRF-2018R1C1B6006854