Molecular Metal Nanoclusters for Water Oxidation Catalysis and Future Potential

Abstract

Fossil fuels, currently the leading source of energy, subsidize a lot of CO2 to the environment, causing many environmental issues including the greenhouse effect. To address these challenges, there is a need to develop alternative and renewable energy resources for a sustainable future. Water, being a renewable source, is a promising candidate because of its ability to produce H2 (HER-cathodic reaction) and O2 (OER-anodic reaction) by providing electricity. However, the overall efficiency of water splitting is limited due to the high overpotential for half-cell anodic reaction, thus becoming a hot area of research to beat its sluggish thermodynamics and slow kinetics. Molecular nanoclusters (MNCs) are emerging materials because of their unique optical, catalytic, magnetic, and electronic properties. These unique properties are due to various factors including electronic shell closing (Jellium model), geometric shell closing, high surface-to-volume ratio, and super atomic behavior, unlike their bulk counterparts. This chapter will summarize the well-developed research information on MNCs and their potential for OER. It will create a link between the reported and ongoing work, consequently helping the researchers to identify future research directions in nanocatalysis for making the water-splitting process an economically viable process for H2 production.