Advancing sustainable and rapid production of hydrogen via novel borophene catalyst

Hydrogen is a renewable energy resource with potential to replace fossil fuels and does not cause environmental concerns during energy generation. However, current mass-production methods involve fossil fuels, prompting urgent research into green hydrogen generation. The recent emergence of borophene oxide (BO), a material resembling graphene, has been theorized to enhance hydrogen production when used as a catalyst. Nevertheless, practical test in such application was not done. Thus, in this project, borophene was synthesized via modified Hummers’ method and used to hydrolyze sodium borohydride, a reaction that produces hydrogen to proof the mentioned theory. Plate-like BO was successfully produced and characterized. More importantly, the experimental results showed that BO performed significantly better than TiO2, a common photocatalyst in where BO was able to produce 50 mL of H2 in only 90 s. However, further doping the BO with Fe reduced the catalytic performance and took at least 3.33 times longer than BO to produce 50 mL of H2. Despite this, the project has successfully proven the catalytic properties of borophene in hydrogen production and borophene could be utilized in the future in the generation of sustainable energy.