In a major breakthrough for clean energy, researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati have developed an innovative composite coating technology that boosts the efficiency of green hydrogen production by over fifty percent. This pioneering advancement significantly improves both the performance and durability of solar-driven water-splitting systems.
Conventionally, generating green hydrogen through the Photo-Assisted Electrochemical process faces two major hurdles: catalyst layers peeling off the electrodes over time, and gas bubbles sticking to the surfaces, which blocks active sites and stalls production.
To solve this, the IIT Guwahati team—led by Professor Uttam Manna and Professor Mohammad Qureshi—designed a unique, durable coating. They successfully combined graphitic carbon nitride, a two-dimensional photocatalyst, with a bubble-repellent hydrogel layer on porous nickel foam.
Unlike traditional methods that merely apply photocatalysts as a surface layer, this new architecture embeds the photocatalyst directly inside the coating structure itself. This clever design prevents the catalyst from peeling away while simultaneously creating a much larger active surface area for the water-splitting reaction to take place.
The result is a highly resilient system that effectively repels gas bubbles and maintains peak performance. Published in the prestigious international journal Small, this homegrown innovation marks a massive step forward in reducing global reliance on fossil fuels and accelerating the transition to sustainable, zero-emission energy.