Development of Metal Chalcogenides for Energy Storage Applications

Reddy Inta, Harish (2022) Development of Metal Chalcogenides for Energy Storage Applications. PhD thesis, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata.

Text (PhD thesis of Harish Reddy Inta (14RS051)) 14RS051_DCS.pdf - Submitted Version Restricted to Repository staff only Download (9MB)

Abstract

The raising global population and the shortage of natural energy sources like coal, gasoline, etc., have raised the demand for alternative energy sources. Among the various energy storage technologies, hydrogen production from electrochemical water spitting reaction is considered to be an efficient pathway to store the energy in a sustainable manner. On the other hand, rechargeable batteries and supercapacitors are evolved as two promising energy storage systems as they are widely implanted in the consumer electronics and also for powering the electrical vehicles. To address the above mentioned challenges, we aimed to develop earth abundant transition metal chalcogenide based materials for electro-catalyzing water splitting reaction (both HER and OER) as well as to fabricate the high performance hybrid supercapacitor devices. Chapter 1 gives a general overview on the importance of energy storage and the available energy storage technologies. In addition, the fundamentals of the electrocatalytic water splitting and supercapacitors were discussed. Further, the state-of-the-art literature based on the electrocatalytic water splitting and the supercapacitors was briefly discussed. Subsequently, the literature on metal chalcogenides for energy storage applications was summarized. This is followed by the challenges that have motivated the working chapters have been discussed. Chapter 2 provides the details of electrochemical techniques which were used for electrochemical performance evaluation of developed materials. The electrocatalytic activity and supercapacitor performance were evaluated by several techniques which include cyclic voltammetry/linear sweep voltammetry, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, and chronoamperometry/chronopotentiometery. Further, a detailed description of the important metrics such as overpotential, ECSA, specific capacitance, energy density, etc. which are necessary to evaluate and compare the electrocatalytic activity as well as the charge storage ability of materials are provided. Chapter 3 discusses a strategy to prepare thermodynamically meta-stable 1T-MoS2 directly onto carbon cloth (CC) for superior electrochemical applications. Chapter 4 emphasizes a two-step selenization approach to prepare Ni0.85Se/MoSe2 interfacial structures for catalyzing HER in alkaline medium. Chapter 5 demonstrates a facile one step solvothermal route to prepare pure phase Ni₃Se₄ nanostructures and attempted to understand the synthetic factors such as solvent and Ni/Se ratio on the formation of Ni₃Se₄.

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