Indian scientists develop new technique to boost catalysts for clean hydrogen production

Scientists at Centre for Nano and Soft Matter Sciences (CeNS), Bengaluru have unveiled a novel method to enhance the performance of catalysts used in water‑splitting — a key process in producing clean hydrogen.

What’s the breakthrough?

• The new technique targets a class of materials called coordination polymers (COPs) — compounds formed by metal ions and organic molecules, which are used as catalysts in electrolysis.
• COPs have long held promise, but their catalytic activity has been limited: they are usually surrounded by water or solvent molecules, which reduces the number of “active sites” available for chemical reaction.
• To overcome this, the CeNS researchers used argon‑plasma treatment, which creates coordinatively unsaturated metal sites (CUMSs) — in effect “activating” the COPs so more sites are available to drive the reaction.

Improved performance & validation

• The plasma‑treated COPs — particularly Ni‑ and Co‑based COPs — showed dramatically improved electrochemical performance for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER), which is typically the bottleneck (slow and energy‑intensive) in water splitting.
• Crucially, detailed structural analyses — including X‑ray diffraction (XRD), TEM imaging, and X‑ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) — confirmed that while the material’s catalytic performance increased, its bulk structural integrity remained intact (i.e. the framework was preserved).

Why this matters for hydrogen energy

• The new method offers a cost‑effective route to improving catalyst efficiency for water electrolysis — a core step in producing “green hydrogen.”
• By making catalysts more efficient and affordable, this could accelerate efforts to scale up hydrogen‑based clean energy solutions — a key to reducing carbon emissions and supporting sustainable, clean‑fuel goals worldwide.

Publication & institutional context

• The research was conducted under the aegis of the Department of Science and Technology (DST).
• The findings have been published in the peer‑reviewed journal ACS Applied Nano Materials.

Source: DD News