Chiral Metal Coating to Enhance Water Electrolysis

Producing hydrogen through water splitting often faces challenges of overpotential, stability, and expensive catalysts, which limit its efficiency and hinder the advancement of hydrogen production technologies. Nickel foam and nickel meshes have emerged as promising materials for electrolyzer electrodes due to their high surface area and the ability to produce electrolyzers with a very small gap between the anode and cathode. This study presents a simple method for coating Ni-based electrodes with a chiral Ni-Au film, using electroplating, thus enhancing its efficiency dramatically. We introduce chirality to the electroplating layer by incorporating an enantiopure chiral reagent into the electroplating solution. The chiral layer enhances the oxygen evolution reaction due to the chiral-induced spin selectivity effect. By optimizing the chiral electroplating process, we demonstrate the reduction of the overpotential and an increase in the reaction efficiency by 95% at 1 M KOH at room temperature.