Nature Magazine Recognizes IIT Kanpur's Joint-Study On Cost-Effective Alloy For Energy Storage
The world”s leading multidisciplinary science journal, Nature, highlighted a research paper on the study of “cost effective alloy for energy storage”. The Nature mentioned the research paper, prepared by Professor Krishanu Biswas of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur and a team of multi-institutional researchers, as one of the ‘high-impact research papers from India that are shaping science’.
The research paper based on the alloy HEA, titled “Low-cost high entropy alloy (HEA) for high-efficiency oxygen evolution reaction (OER),” was published in the Nano Research Journal in its edition.
Professor Krishanu Biswas and fellow researchers from IIT Mandi, IIT Kharagpur and IISc Bangalore, conducted research on a special kind of material called a high entropy alloy (HEA). This alloy consists of a mix of five elements including Cobalt, Iron, Gallium, Nickel, and Zinc. The research was conducted on the ability of the alloy in splitting water into two elements- oxygen and hydrogen. Water splitting is an essential process as it is widely used in many technological applications such as electrolyzer, fuel cells, and catalysis.
Among the products received by the process of water splitting, hydrogen is considered a clean substitute for fossil fuels with net-zero emissions.
The newly developed innovative alloy surpassed the performance and durability of the currently used element ruthenium oxide which is far more expensive than HEA. The materials of the study are made up of earth-abundant elements, making it sustainable and easy to fabricate for application.
The study has wide ramifications in green hydrogen economy in which energy-rich hydrogen is extracted from water through electrochemical water-splitting. Electrochemical water splitting is a highly promising sustainable and pollution-free approach for green hydrogen and oxygen production.
In the above mentioned process, two electrodes are immersed in an electrolyte solution. The chemical reactions at the electrodes will result in the production of oxygen and hydrogen gas in the presence of efficient bifunctional catalyst. However, the process was not commercially viable so far, as most electrochemical systems use rare and expensive metals which restrict their use in large-scale applications.
While, lower-cost systems were not being able to achieve efficient catalysis. The novel alloy catalyst designed, developed, and tested by Professor Biswas and his collaborators can now make the process much more easier and affordable by using low-cost high-entropy alloy to store energy from renewable sources, allowing the use of clean energy.
This application further would aggravate our stride towards a cleaner environment, reducing dependence on fossil fuels and mitigating global warming.
Along with Professor Krishanu Biswas, the other researchers on the team also includes Dr. Nirmal Kumar Katiyar from IIT Kanpur, Prof. Aditi Halder and Dr. Lalita Sharma from IIT Mandi, Prof. Chandra Sekhar Tiwary and Dr. Rakesh Das from IIT Kharagpur, Prof. Abhishek K. Singh, Dr. Arko Parui and Dr. Ritesh Kumar from Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore.
