Smoltek Hydrogen is verifying its technology for high-volume manufacturing

PEM elec­tro­lyz­ers are equip­ment used to make hydro­gen. They work with elec­tri­city and use iridi­um as cata­lyst to split water molecules into hydro­gen and oxy­gen, and they will play an import­ant role to reduce our car­bon foot­print, since the elec­tro­lyz­ers can make the pro­duc­tion of e.g., steel, fer­til­izers, and fuels for heavy trans­port fossil free. 

The PEM elec­tro­lyz­er has sev­er­al advant­ages over oth­er elec­tro­lyz­er types. The rap­id start and stop times make it oper­ate effi­ciently togeth­er with inter­mit­tent elec­tri­city sources (such as wind- and sol­ar-power). This flex­ib­il­ity means that the PEM elec­tro­lyz­er can pro­duce cheap fossil-free hydro­gen on windy and sunny days, when the elec­tri­city prices are low. 

The hydro­gen can then be stored and used when needed, for example in the industry, or be turned back into elec­tri­city again. This flex­ib­il­ity and cost advant­age make it attract­ive to scale-up the pro­duc­tion of PEM elec­tro­lyz­ers, even though they today use large amounts of the scarce met­al iridi­um as catalyst.

Because iridi­um is such a lim­ited resource, redu­cing its use in the elec­tro­lyz­ers is an abso­lute must, oth­er­wise the scale-up of PEM elec­tro­lyz­ers will be too expens­ive. Already today the iridi­um price is around SEK 2 mil­lion and is expec­ted to reach around SEK 8 mil­lion by 2030.

This requires new mater­i­al engin­eer­ing solu­tions for elec­tro­lyz­er cells. Like the one Smol­tek Hydro­gen is in the midst of devel­op­ing. It is a new cell mater­i­al that sub­stan­tially will reduce the amount of iridi­um in the elec­tro­lyz­er cell.

The devel­op­ment of Smol­tek Hydrogen’s elec­tro­lyz­er cell mater­i­al (ECM) is advan­cing accord­ing to plan, which is to lower the amount of iridi­um in the elec­tro­lyz­er cell towards 0.1 mg/​cm². As of now the com­pany has pro­duced the same amount of hydro­gen as a stand­ard mater­i­al (that uses 2.5 mg iridium/​cm²) with only 0.5 mg iridium/​cm² and will most cer­tainly reach the goal of the year, which is to have an even lower iridi­um loading. 

First steps towards indus­tri­al man­u­fac­tur­ing of the cell mater­i­al
Besides the tech­no­logy devel­op­ment, Smol­tek Hydro­gen is work­ing in par­al­lel with devel­op­ment of an indus­tri­al man­u­fac­tur­ing concept for the cell mater­i­al. Today the samples are pro­duced with labor­at­ory tech­no­lo­gies, in low quant­it­ies and with typ­ic­al area of only a few square cen­ti­meters, where­as the indus­tri­al man­u­fac­tur­ing concept must be scal­able to the high volumes fore­seen, which is tens of thou­sands of square meters a year, and beyond.

As a first step towards indus­tri­al man­u­fac­tur­ing, prac­tic­al val­id­a­tion of the selec­ted concept for the growth of nano­struc­tures is needed, since it is a slightly dif­fer­ent type of Chem­ic­al Vapor Depos­ition (CVD) pro­cess than used today. In order to do this Smol­tek Hydro­gen has placed an order with AGC Plasma Tech­no­logy Solu­tions for the design and engin­eer­ing of a new ded­ic­ated Pro­to­type Coat­er tool. Smol­tek has explored sev­er­al dif­fer­ent con­cepts and the selec­ted PECVD tech­no­logy is expec­ted to work well for Smoltek’s growth process.

Smol­tek and AGC Plasma Tech­no­logy Solu­tions will togeth­er design a Pro­to­type Coat­er tool that can mir­ror the out­put of full-size equip­ment. It will be placed in the Chalmers MC2 facil­it­ies in Gothen­burg, where Smol­tek cur­rently has its nano­struc­ture fab­ric­a­tion oper­a­tions. This is an import­ant first step towards indus­tri­al­iz­a­tion of the Smol­tek Hydro­gen cell material. 

The Pro­to­type Coat­er will be used to val­id­ate that we have chosen the right concept for the future volume man­u­fac­tur­ing, and also make it pos­sible to devel­op indus­tri­al growth recipes before fur­ther scale-up. And even more import­ant – it provides samples of indus­tri­al tech­no­logy already now, when cus­tom­ers are to use our new mater­i­al in the devel­op­ment of their next gen­er­a­tion of PEM electrolyzers. 

Shafiq Kabir, Head of Volume Pro­cesses at Smol­tek Hydrogen

After suc­cess­ful val­id­a­tion of the Pro­to­type Coat­er, Smol­tek Hydro­gen aims to order a Pilot Coat­er which is a smal­ler ver­sion of a final high-volume tool. This is a cru­cial com­pon­ent of AGC’s busi­ness mod­el, since they guar­an­tee the per­form­ance of the volume machine if their smal­ler coat­er is used to spe­cify its require­ments. The Pilot Coat­er will be used to pro­duce test series for cus­tom­ers as well as for veri­fic­a­tion of the pro­duc­tion tech­no­lo­gies before volume manufacturing. 

Smol­tek Hydro­gen plans to scale up the man­u­fac­tur­ing in sync with cus­tom­ers’ product devel­op­ment pro­cesses, to ensure cus­tom­ers can obtain appro­pri­ate sizes and quant­it­ies of samples as well as final products when needed. 

About AGC
AGC Plasma Tech­no­logy Solu­tions is a new busi­ness unit with­in AGC Glass Europe SA, a European lead­er in flat glass. AGC Plasma Tech­no­logy Solu­tions is provid­ing low-pres­sure plasma coat­ing tech­no­logy and equip­ment. AGC Plasma is an expans­ive team of plasma coat­ing experts spe­cial­ized in innov­at­ive PVD and PECVD applic­a­tions from R&D and new product devel­op­ment all the way through to equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­ing and oper­a­tion­al man­age­ment of mass pro­duc­tion coat­ing plants. Vis­it the web­site www.agc-plasma.com to learn more about the equip­ment and ser­vices offered by AGC Plasma Tech­no­logy Solutions.

People pic­tured in the top photo, from left: Amin Saleeem, Bas­tien Pen­ninckx, Shafik Kabir, Erwan-Axel Mor­ris­son (AGC), Fabi­an Wenger, Jer­oen Schot­saert (AGC), Ellinor Ehrn­berg, Réka Simon-Balint.