Utilizing e-wastes for the development of efficient electrodes for hydrogen and oxygen generation

Abstract

Disposal of e-wastes in prescribed landfills pose a serious of environmental concerns at both local and global scale. Instead recovering valuable materials from e-wastes and utilizing it for development of eco-design devices, guides us to a more productive way of managing wastes. Copper even recycled, is capable of retaining its intrinsic properties and can be reused with same expectation of performances; capitalizing on this fact herein, we attempted to utilize copper from e-waste as an economically viable catalytic substrate for overall water-splitting. Upon deposition of amorphous nickel cobalt phosphide films, the scrap copper wires (SCW) are highly efficient for catalyzing hydrogen and oxygen evolution reaction at low overpotential (10η-HER = 178 mV, 10η-OER = 220 mV), & considerably promotes water-catalysis at 1.59 V@10 mA/cm2. Moreover, the electrodes demonstrate longterm stability in alkaline electrolyte which can potentially be employed for largescale electrolyzer application. The proposed electrode architecture, by the explicit growth of bimetallic phosphide on highly conductive Cu substrate, facilitates fast electron transport & promises a minimum contact resistance between electrocatalyst and current collector. This work paves the way for development of environmentally sound electrode materials from e-waste, that can be exercised for a myriad of other clean energy reactions.