Green energy generation by splitting water from nanoporous NiFe₂O₄ based Hydroelectric cell

Renewable energy is the driving wheel for future technologies. Due to the limited stock of fossil fuels and their environmental impact, there is an ever-increasing demand for clean energy sources. Hydroelectric Cell (HEC) is one of the excellent tools which produce green energy. In the device fabrication of HEC, a Zn plate has been used as anode, Ag paste as a cathode, and the material as the electrolyte. In this direction, we synthesized a nanoporous NiFe₂O₄ using the solid-state reaction method. NiFe₂O₄ pellets were sintered at two different temperatures, 950 and 1050 °C, for two hours. It was found out that the maximum current output of NiFe₂O₄ based HEC decreases with an increase in the sintering temperature (leads to grain growth). This grain growth reduces nano-porosity and the number of defects in the material, which are the vital parameters for the separation of physisorbed water molecules. The V-I polarisation curve of NiFe₂O₄ based HECs provides a maximum current output of 15.3 mA for the samples sintered at 950 °C, and 9.28 mA for the ones sintered at 1050 °C. Variation in Oxygen vacancies with sintering temperature was analyzed after the peak fitting of O1s spectra, which was obtained from the X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy.