Dinesh Bhalothia
Mitigation of global energy crisis and adverse climatic impacts (rising CO2 emission) relies on the implementation of sustainable energy economy. In this context, catalytic transformations of carbon dioxide (CO2) to fuel/chemical feedstocks and to improve the sluggish kinetics of oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), a central limiting index preventing fuel cells from “seizing the market” are of paramount importance factors. A critical element in the pursuit of these quests is development of economical and efficient nanocatalysts (NCs). Effective strategies in solving aforementioned issues have been widely studied, however, promising and efficient techniques are still far awayto attain commercial standards. Our research aims to disclose oxygen reduction and heterogeneous CO2 conversion pathways in photo / electrochemical reactions to investigate the performance descriptors. For improving structural reliability and activity, surface modifications on hierarchical structured multi-metallic heterogeneous NCs (comprising metal-metal or metal-oxide conjunctions) via 3d-transition metal based atomic to nano scale clusters deposition has been done. Such an architecture enables interfacial local strain and quantum confinement coupling effects to confine chare (i.e. electrons) at catalyst surface and thus boost the oxygen reduction and photo / electrochemical CO2 conversion reaction kinetics. The in-situ synchrotron X-ray absorption, emission and diffraction spectroscopies were conducted to systematically investigate the materials properties
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