A team of scientists from the University of Bayreuth in Germany and Shenzhen University in China, led by professor Francesco Ciucci, has made a significant breakthrough in green hydrogen production. The main limitation in producing 'green' hydrogen through electrochemical water splitting has been the slow rate of the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and the use of expensive noble metals like iridium. The team's novel approach involves dispersing individual iridium atoms in a much smaller quantity than typically needed for OER, along with dimethylimidazole (MI) and cobalt-iron (CoFe) hydroxide supports. This method has shown improved OER activity and reduced noble metal usage. The researchers found that the catalyst synthesis process is simple and can be conducted at ambient conditions, enabling its application in various catalytic reactions requiring metals like platinum, palladium, and ruthenium. The team successfully tested the iridium-CoFe-OH-MI catalyst in a two-electrode water-splitting cell and an anion-exchange membrane (AEM) electrolyzer. The AEM electrolyzer demonstrated stable operation for over 150 hours with minimal degradation at a voltage of 500 mA cm–2. This groundbreaking work was featured in the October 2024 edition of Nature Nanotechnology.