Not only South Korea but many other countries in the world have been making an effort to transition to a hydrogen economy, for long term energy storage and long distance transport of low-carbon energy.

However, the amount of hydrogen that can be produced using conventional methods is limited because they mainly use by-product hydrogen gas from crude oil refinement or modify natural gas at high temperatures.

It is also hard to say the methods are ‘completely clean’ because they use fossil fuels that generate carbon dioxide.

For these reasons, electrolysis of water is required for complete hydrogen production, although it uses expensive metal catalysts such as platinum, iridium oxide and ruthenium oxide, as well as electricity.

Professor Joong Hee Lee’s team of Chonbuk National University have developed a new catalyst based on porous transition metal through a cheaper, easier and more efficient manufacturing method.

The team successfully created a nanostructure in the shape of nickel–cobalt phosphide nanoneedle, using nickel and cobalt. The materials are inexpensive, easy to apply, mass-producible and have high surface area.

The catalyst showed a cell voltage of 1.54V (50mA cm−2), which is much lower than that of platinum-carbon and ruthenium oxide-carbon. It also has superior durability compared to existing commercialized products.

Van Hien Hoa, Duy Thanh Tran, Huu Tuan Le, Nam Hoon Kim and Joong Hee Lee participated in the research, with support from the Korean Ministry of Science and ICT, and the Ministry of Education.

The research results were recently published in Nano Energy and Applied Catalysis B-Environmental.