Recent Trends and Perspectives in Electrochemical Water Splitting with an Emphasis on Sulfide, Selenide, and Phosphide Catalysts of Fe, Co, and Ni: A Review

Increasing demand for finding eco-friendly and everlasting energy sources is now totally depending on fuel cell technology. Though it is an eco-friendly way of producing energy for the urgent requirements, it needs to be improved to make it cheaper and more eco-friendly. Although there are several types of fuel cells, the hydrogen (H2) and oxygen (O2) fuel cell is the one with zero carbon emission and water as the only byproduct. However, supplying fuels in the purest form (at least the H2) is essential to ensure higher life cycles and less decay in cell efficiency. The current large-scale H2 production is largely dependent on steam reforming of fossil fuels, which generates CO2 along with H2 and the source of which is going to be depleted. As an alternate, electrolysis of water has been given greater attention than the steam reforming. The reasons are as follows: the very high purity of the H2 produced, the abundant source, no need for high-temperature, high-pressure reactors, and so on. In earlier days, noble metals such as Pt (cathode) and Ir and Ru (anode) were used for this purpose. However, there are problems in employing these metals, as they are noble and expensive. In this review, we elaborate how the group VIII 3d metal sulfide, selenide, and phosphide nanomaterials have arisen as abundant and cheaper electrode materials (catalysts) beyond the oxides and hydroxides of the same. We also highlight the evaluation perspective of such electrocatalysts toward water electrolysis in detail.