Smoltek can reduce contact resistance in electrolyzers and fuel cells

Smol­tek has been awar­ded three new pat­ent grants. Each one of these relates to a new pat­ent fam­ily, all of them describ­ing how we can use Smol­tek’s core tech­no­logy for redu­cing con­tact res­ist­ance in elec­tro­chem­ic­al cells.

Elec­tro­chem­ic­al cells are found in wide­spread applic­a­tions in mod­ern energy sys­tems, such as bat­ter­ies, fuel cells and elec­tro­lyz­ers. How­ever, exist­ing chem­ic­al cells pos­sess high con­tact res­ist­ance between dif­fer­ent com­pon­ents of the cell which leads to lower effi­ciency. This prob­lem may even be worsened by the form­a­tion of non-con­duct­ing sur­face lay­ers on some com­pon­ents due to the harsh envir­on­ment of the cell.

With these three new pat­ent fam­il­ies, we are really strength­en­ing the scope our IP port­fo­lio with­in the field of increas­ing the effi­ciency in elec­tro­chem­ic­al cells, both for elec­tro­lyz­ers and fuel cells

Fabi­an Wenger, Head of R&D at Smol­tek Hydrogen

Innov­a­tion descrip­tion of the new pat­ent fam­il­ies
Con­tact Res­ist­ance pat­ent fam­ily: The Innov­a­tion improve a sep­ar­at­or plate arrange­ment for an elec­tro­chem­ic­al cell by com­pris­ing a nano­struc­ture which offers lowered con­tact res­ist­ance between the sep­ar­at­or ele­ment and the dif­fu­sion layer.

Nano Vel­cro pat­ent fam­ily: The Innov­a­tion improves the inter­lay­er con­nec­tions in elec­tro­chem­ic­al cells by using elong­ated nano­struc­tures that are mech­an­ic­ally entangled between the layers.

Ver­tic­al Graphene pat­ent fam­ily: The Innov­a­tion offer lowered con­tact res­ist­ance between sep­ar­at­or ele­ments and adja­cent com­pon­ents in elec­tro­chem­ic­al cells and increase res­ist­ance to corrosion.

It is very valu­able for us to have a plat­form of pat­ents that have wider areas of use than in just PEM elec­tro­lyz­ers, espe­cially when we are talk­ing to dif­fer­ent com­pan­ies in the hydro­gen industry, who often work both with fuel cells and sev­er­al dif­fer­ent types of elec­tro­lyz­ers. This opens new oppor­tun­it­ies for our business.

Ellinor Ehrn­berg, Pres­id­ent of Smol­tek Hydrogen

Smoltek’s pat­ent port­fo­lio now glob­ally com­prises 87 gran­ted pat­ents. Read more about our IP and pat­ents.