Hydrogen Production from Water Electrolysis: The Role of OER and HER Electrocatalysts

For replacing non-renewable fossil fuels and to address the serious environment related issues, hydrogen is considered as the main candidate for green energy. Studies are going on worldwide for developing technologies that produce hydrogen energy, such as, water splitting, fuel cells, etc. The large-scale production of hydrogen energy using electrocatalytic water splitting is an environmentally friendly technology. This system involves several important reactions; mainly hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Both these reactions require highly active and stable electrocatalysts. In this chapter, we summarize the fundamentals of HER, OER and some of the recent developments on OER and HER electrocatalysts and the strategies for improving the performance of these electrocatalysts.