Application of New Hydrogen and Oxygen Evolution Electrochemical Catalysts for Solid Polymer Water Electrolysis System

Solid polymer electrolyte (SPE) water electrolysis plays an important role in the utilization of renewable resources and the development of the hydrogen economy. Catalyst is the most significant influencial factor to attain a high energy conversion efficiency. Due to the serious corrosion effects and high operation potential in the SPE water electrolysis, commercial catalysts used for the SPE water electrolysis are typically Pt and Ir based materials. However, the limited resources and high price of precious metals lead to expensive catalysis costs and impose huge resitrictions to the development of SPE water electrolysis technology. Investigation of water electrolysis catalysts in the acidic electrolyte mainly focus upon cutting down the usage of precious metals, and improving and extending the ultilization and stability of noble metal catalysts. Moreover, persuing cost-effective alternative materials and developing non-precious hydrogen and oxygen evolution catalysts are the target of searching for efficient SPE water electrolysis catalysts. Combining the in-depth expoloration of catalysis principles and fast advances of simulation and calculation technologies, design and synthesis of the more active hydrogen and oxygen evolution catalysts are of significance influence for the application of SPE water electrolysis. This work makes a summary of current developments of mechamism for SPE water electrolysis, introduces the latest progress of catalyst preparation methods for SPE catalysts, does a simple summary on the development of multiple fuctional catalysts for the hydrogen and oxygen evolution process and provides some suggestions to the investigation of water electrolysis catalysts. We hope this work can play positive roles in the advances of SPE water electrolysis.