TY - JOUR
T1 - Non-invasive current collectors for improved current-density distribution during CO2 electrolysis on super-hydrophobic electrodes
AU - Iglesias van Montfort, Hugo Pieter
AU - Li, Mengran
AU - Irtem, Erdem
AU - Abdinejad, Maryam
AU - Wu, Yuming
AU - Pal, Santosh K.
AU - Sassenburg, Mark
AU - Ripepi, Davide
AU - Subramanian, Siddhartha
AU - Biemolt, Jasper
AU - Rufford, Thomas E.
AU - Burdyny, Thomas
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - Electrochemical reduction of CO2 presents an attractive way to store renewable energy in chemical bonds in a potentially carbon-neutral way. However, the available electrolyzers suffer from intrinsic problems, like flooding and salt accumulation, that must be overcome to industrialize the technology. To mitigate flooding and salt precipitation issues, researchers have used super-hydrophobic electrodes based on either expanded polytetrafluoroethylene (ePTFE) gas-diffusion layers (GDL’s), or carbon-based GDL’s with added PTFE. While the PTFE backbone is highly resistant to flooding, the non-conductive nature of PTFE means that without additional current collection the catalyst layer itself is responsible for electron-dispersion, which penalizes system efficiency and stability. In this work, we present operando results that illustrate that the current distribution and electrical potential distribution is far from a uniform distribution in thin catalyst layers (~50 nm) deposited onto ePTFE GDL’s. We then compare the effects of thicker catalyst layers (~500 nm) and a newly developed non-invasive current collector (NICC). The NICC can maintain more uniform current distributions with 10-fold thinner catalyst layers while improving stability towards ethylene (≥ 30%) by approximately two-fold.
AB - Electrochemical reduction of CO2 presents an attractive way to store renewable energy in chemical bonds in a potentially carbon-neutral way. However, the available electrolyzers suffer from intrinsic problems, like flooding and salt accumulation, that must be overcome to industrialize the technology. To mitigate flooding and salt precipitation issues, researchers have used super-hydrophobic electrodes based on either expanded polytetrafluoroethylene (ePTFE) gas-diffusion layers (GDL’s), or carbon-based GDL’s with added PTFE. While the PTFE backbone is highly resistant to flooding, the non-conductive nature of PTFE means that without additional current collection the catalyst layer itself is responsible for electron-dispersion, which penalizes system efficiency and stability. In this work, we present operando results that illustrate that the current distribution and electrical potential distribution is far from a uniform distribution in thin catalyst layers (~50 nm) deposited onto ePTFE GDL’s. We then compare the effects of thicker catalyst layers (~500 nm) and a newly developed non-invasive current collector (NICC). The NICC can maintain more uniform current distributions with 10-fold thinner catalyst layers while improving stability towards ethylene (≥ 30%) by approximately two-fold.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85174463618&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41467-023-42348-6
DO - 10.1038/s41467-023-42348-6
M3 - Article
C2 - 37852966
AN - SCOPUS:85174463618
SN - 2041-1723
VL - 14
JO - Nature Communications
JF - Nature Communications
IS - 1
M1 - 6579
ER -