Book

Description

Energy sustainability is perhaps the greatest ongoing challenge facing humanity. The drive to replace fossil fuel-based sources of energy with environmentally friendly, secure, and renewable alternatives continues to grow, and although this fact has been long realized by the scientific community and beyond. Interesting, no present -day solution effectively competes with fossil fuels from an economic or performance standpoint. One potentially cleaner alternative is proposed through electrochemical water splitting, whereby water decomposes into hydrogen and oxygen. However, materials that catalyze these reactions are often quite rare and expensive, examples being Pt and IrO2. For this reason, this chapter reflects here after the aims to seek out new earth-abundant materials, with a focus on transition metal chalcogenide systems.