Evaluation of Schiff-base Nickel Complex Towards Electrochemical Hydrogen Production

Abstract

Today with the advancement of technology and population, global energy demands has increased many folds. 90% of worldwide vitality request is satisfied by the carbon-based non-renewable energy sources which resulted in the emission of greenhouse gases like CO2 in the atmosphere. Thus the furthermost challenge for the scientist is to find a clean energy source. Among the various candidates, hydrogen is the potential substitute as its byproduct is only water so it can be used efficiently in the fuel cell. Hydrogen is also called the “energy currency”. Among three primary pathway for hydrogen creation like coal gasification, steam reformation of methane and water electrolysis the third one gives us plan to manageable hydrogen generation as its feedstock is water which is renewable and present in abundant amount. The issue with its essentialness is its discontinuity and unpredictable nature as it is dependent on sun and wind energy. Until this point, for evolution of hydrogen Pt and hydrogenase enzyme are amazing electrocatalyst. However, Pt high cost and constrained accessibility have motivated the quest for financially feasible, earth inexhaustible catalysts and at the same time, the large scale utilization of hydrogenase is restricted by its chemical sensitivity which in turn prompted the quest for feasible and reasonable homogeneous and heterogeneous materials numerous which utilize transitions metals from the first row which are earth-abundant as well as less costly and effective at the same time. Electrocatalyst that are based on the first-row transition series like nickel, iron, cobalt has gained much attraction from researchers all over the world owing to their fairly catalytic activities. In this work, nickel complex was synthesized by the binding of NiCl2 with Schiff's base ligand which was developed using salicylaldehyde and aniline. The Ni-based electrocatalyst developed was characterized with the help of spectroscopic strategy cyclic voltammetry and UV-VIS Spectroscopy. The outcomes obtained with characterization techniques depicts that the prepared electrocatalyst is active in nature towards hydrogen evolution as suggested by increase in current with increase in acid concentration. The overpotential for the electrocatalyst is determined to be 390mV with the TOF value of 6.39s-1.