Recent Development of Nanocatalysts for Hydrogen Production

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Background

Worldwide energy consumption is rapidly growing, and the current energy system based on fossil fuels is the major cause of global climate change and environmental pollution. This makes searching for clean and sustainable energy sources an urgent task. Hydrogen is a green and sustainable energy carrier that has been recognized as one of the most promising candidates to replace traditional fossil fuels in the future. Production of hydrogen by different catalytic process has received extensive attentions in the fields of both materials chemistry and energy chemistry. In these processes, catalysts play multiple roles in all aspects of the hydrogen generation. Thus, the development of novel catalysts with both low cost and high performance for these processes is of extreme importance.

Nanomaterials-based catalysts (“nanocatalysts” for short) have a unique structure and a high specific surface area，which makes it a promising hydrogen production catalyst. Before large-scale commercialization of these hydrogen production technologies is possible, there are several issues that should be addressed such as reducing the costs of nanocatalysts to an acceptable level, improving the catalytic activity and selectivity of the nanocatalysts, enhancing the stability of the nanocatalysts and so on. Therefore, designing low-cost routes to prepare nanocatalysts, especially those noble-metal free catalysts, which can be easily scaled up to industrial processes is of extreme importance We hope to make progress in these aspects to participate in and drive a potential hydrogen economy.

In this Research Topic, we will focus on the cutting-edge development of design, synthesis of nanocatalysts, mechanism and their applications in hydrogen production. We especially welcome manuscripts discussing the relationships between the morphology, structures, surface states, crystallinity, the defects, etc of nanocatalysts and their activity/selectivity/stability to help design novel catalysts with high performance. We are particularly interested in hydrogen production by the following types of reactions:
- catalytic hydrolysis/methanolysis of chemical hydrides
- catalytic decomposition of formic acid
- catalytic dehydrogenation of formaldehyde

The types of the paper welcomed include Mini-review and Original Research.

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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