recent progresses in the development of green electrocatalysts for sustainable energy production

The challenges posed by the actual energy dilemma and global warming have significantly triggered the attention on clean energy production. in this regard, green hydrogen obtained through electrochemical water splitting, or by biomass-derived ethanol valorization, is an attractive candidate to solve the global energy crisis and shape a sustainable energy economy for the achievement of ‘‘net-zero emissions’’ by 2050. notwithstanding the advances in these fields, current technologies still fail to compete with fossil fuel-based counterparts, triggering the necessity of additional research efforts for the development of efficient and cost-effective systems. such advances necessarily rely not only on the fabrication of eco-friendly electrocatalysts endowed with a high activity and good service life, but also on a carbon-neutral exploitation of the natural capital, including the largely available solar light and seawater. in such a broad context, this presentation will provide a general overview on recent results achieved by our research group in the tailored fabrication of electrocatalysts for energy production with negligible environmental footprint. specifically, the attention will be dedicated to the engineering of functional nanoarchitectures for: (a) the oxygen evolution reaction (oer), the bottleneck of water splitting to yield h2; (b) the ethanol oxidation reaction (eor), representative of a possible waste-to-resource conversion. the discussion will focus on the following case studies, highlighting the most important achievements and the roadblocks still to be overcome for future research progresses: (a1) nanomaterials based on graphitic carbon nitride (gcn), a vis-light photoactive semiconductor consisting of abundant and non-toxic elements, functionalized with low amounts of nanostructured metal/oxide co-catalyst [1-3]; (a2) nanocomposites based on manganese, iron and cobalt oxides, featuring attractive performances for selective oxygen production from seawater splitting [4]; (b) hierarchical gold/manganese oxide nanoarchitectures for ethanol electrochemical valorization [5]. the outcomes of a comprehensive experimental and theoretical characterization validate our preparation strategies, based on combined plasma-assisted processes and liquid-phase routes, as effective strategies to active materials for an efficient electrical-to-chemical energy conversion. these issues represent important starting points to minimize costs and facilitate hydrogen integration in the energy models of a decarbonized and sustainable society.