Enhancing Efficiency and Durability of PEM Water Electrolysis with Low Iridium Loading through Nanofiber-Modified Porous Transport Electrodes

Smol­tek Hydro­gen has made sig­ni­fic­ant strides in achiev­ing low iridi­um load­ing through our innov­at­ive Por­ous Trans­port Elec­trode (PTE) concept. This approach involves modi­fy­ing a Por­ous Trans­port Lay­er (PTL) by grow­ing ver­tic­ally aligned Car­bon Nan­ofibers (CNFs) using our in-house pat­ent pro­tec­ted tech­no­logy, effi­ciently increas­ing sur­face area. Fol­low­ing this modi­fic­a­tion, a pro­tect­ive lay­er of cor­ro­sion-res­ist­ant and con­duct­ive mater­i­al (e.g., Plat­in­um) is applied to the CNFs. Sub­sequently, an OER cata­lyst lay­er is depos­ited util­iz­ing a three-elec­trode cath­od­ic elec­trode­pos­ition meth­od. The elec­trode­pos­ited Ir cata­lyst exhib­its strong adhe­sion to the CNF PTEs, res­ult­ing in a high elec­tric­al conductivity. 

In this work, we suc­cess­fully reduced Ir load­ings to 0.1 mg/​cm2 in the PTE, demon­strat­ing excel­lent mass activ­ity in the half-cell tests. In the PEMWE tests, the polar­iz­a­tion curves of elec­trodes with low Ir load­ing exhib­ited super­i­or per­form­ance com­pared to cells with sig­ni­fic­antly high­er Ir loading.