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Water splitting: Taking cobalt in isolation

The sustainable production of hydrogen is key to the delivery of clean energy in a hydrogen economy; however, lower-cost alternatives to platinum electrocatalysts are needed. Now, isolated, earth-abundant cobalt atoms dispersed over nitrogen-doped graphene are shown to efficiently electrolyse water to generate hydrogen.

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Figure 1: Atomically dispersing cobalt atoms on nitrogen-doped graphene creates an effective catalyst for the electrolytic production of hydrogen from water.

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Correspondence to Tao Zhang.

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Wang, A., Zhang, T. Water splitting: Taking cobalt in isolation. Nat Energy 1, 15019 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nenergy.2015.19

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