Speaker
Description
The growing demand for sustainable energy technologies has accelerated the development of electrochemical energy conversion and storage systems capable of supporting a clean energy future. Efficient technologies for energy generation, conversion, and storage—including hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), oxygen evolution reaction (OER), water splitting, zinc-
ion batteries, metal-air batteries, supercapacitors, fuel cells, and other next-generation electrochemical devices—are expected to play a pivotal role in global decarbonization.[1, 2] Their performance is fundamentally governed by the molecular design of high-performance
electrode materials possessing superior catalytic activity, rapid charge-transfer kinetics, abundant active sites, and long-term electrochemical stability. Recent advances in nanostructured materials, heterostructure engineering, interface modulation, and transition-
metal-based compounds have significantly improved the efficiency, scalability, and cost-effectiveness of these technologies. This presentation will highlight recent advances in transition-metal oxide and their hybrids for sustainable energy applications, with emphasis on
our work on WS2@NiO/ZnO heterostructures as highly efficient bifunctional electrocatalysts for water and seawater splitting.[3] Developed through rational heterostructure engineering,
the catalyst exhibits excellent HER and OER performance, requiring overpotentials of only 131 mV and 320 mV, respectively, at 10 mA cm−2. The enhanced catalytic performance arises from synergistic interactions between WS2, NiO, and ZnO, leading to abundant active sites, high electrochemically active surface area, low Tafel slopes, reduced charge-transfer resistance, and remarkable long-term stability across a wide pH range, including seawater electrolytes. These findings demonstrate how rational nanostructure and interface engineering can accelerate electrochemical reaction kinetics and enable practical green hydrogen
production.