Atanu Roy

Water Splitting by Using Electrochemical Properties of Material

The present era of ramping energy demands, its storage considerations coupled with environmental contentions being caused by the perishable conventional resources of energy, has set out a clear tone for the research community all across the globe to impart a motivated effort over it. If found, the genuine solution will go a long way to shift the paradigm from the current fossil-based economy to hydrogen-based one. The article at hand prima facie focuses on one of the most promising solutions to the aforementioned problem namely water splitting—more specifically so by harnessing the electrochemical properties of the material. While many options exist to furnish electricity for carrying out the water splitting but the cost compatibility with the other contemporary candidates poses the real bottleneck. The idea over here is to efficiently utilize the hitherto non-conventional methods of energy generation to efficiently and cost effectively achieves water splitting for the subsequent applications. As regards the current trends in water splitting, recent advances include carrying out water splitting by incorporating the visible portion alone from the available light. The resulting hydrogen may then subsequently be employed as a fuel input for different applications. Routes ranging from using advanced catalysis and even artificial photosynthesis are also being considered.

Frequency and temperature dependent dielectric properties of TiO2-V2O5 nanocomposites

In this manuscript, we have reported the crystal structure, dielectric response, and transport phenomenon of TiO2-V2O5 nanocomposites. The nanocomposites were synthesized using a sol-gel technique having different molar ratios of Ti:V (10:10, 10:15, and 10:20). The phase composition and the morphology have been studied using X-ray diffraction and field emission scanning electron microscope, respectively. The impedance spectroscopy studies of the three samples over a wide range of temperature (50 K–300 K) have been extensively described using the internal barrier layer capacitor model. It is based on the contribution of domain and domain boundary, relaxations of the materials, which are the main crucial factors for the enhancement of the dielectric response. The frequency dependent ac conductivity of the ceramics strongly obeys the well-known Jonschers power law, and it has been clearly explained using the theory of jump relaxation model. The temperature dependent bulk conductivity is fairly recognized to the variable-range hopping of localized polarons. The co-existence of mixed valence state of Ti ions (Ti3+ and Ti4+) in the sample significantly contributes to the change of dielectric property. The overall study of dielectric response explains that the dielectric constant and the dielectric loss are strongly dependent on temperature and frequency and decrease with an increase of frequency as well as temperature.