A Journey Towards Efficient Molecular WOCs: From Mononuclear to Polynuclear Complexes

Identifier:  TDX:2962

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TDX2962

Authors:  Hoque, Md Asmaul

Abstract:
Over the last 40 years, the field of molecular water oxidation catalysis has witnessed a tremendous progress improving the catalytic performance up to 6 orders of magnitude higher than the first reported molecular catalyst. Despite the success, there are still several challenges that need to be addressed in order to transfer the high catalytic activity into functional devices. The present doctoral thesis focuses on some of these challenges, in particular, lowering the working potential of the process and trying to transfer the traditional homogeneous catalysts into conductive supports in order to generate powerful water splitting device. With these objectives, a wide range of catalysts including mononuclear, dinuclear all the way to coordination polymers have been prepared. Their catalytic activity, the factors that rule their performance and mechanistic pathways for the reaction have been explored. Finally, some of them have been used to generate the most powerful anode for water oxidation catalysis described to date.