State of the art PEM electrolyzers contain precious metal based catalyst loadings in the several mg/cm2 range. This limits their widespread adoption due to high capital cost. The anode, oxygen evolution reaction (OER) side of the cell in particular suffers due to a lack of stable catalyst supports. Thus, the current practice is to use unsupported precious metal catalysts (iridium based), bulk of which function as the conductive and stable filler with only a minority of surface atoms participating in electrocatalysis. Thus, it is desirable to replace the core of the catalyst particles with economically advantageous non-precious metal based materials, that are preferably conductive and stable. Any non-precious metal based substitute needs to be conductive and also withstand the highly corrosive conditions of the oxygen evolution reaction at low pH. However, in the process of making conductive supports through doping or defecting of oxides their stability is compromised. Thus we focus our investigation on preparing composites containing titanium dioxide nanoparticles (&lt; 100 nm) coated with much smaller platinum or gold nanoparticles that are conductive as well as robust enough to withstand the highly oxidizing electrochemical conditions. This presentation will focus on synthesis routes to prepare these nano-architectures, electrochemical screening using rotating disk electrode, and deployment of the materials in membrane electrode assembly. Finally, the electrochemical activities and catalyst layer performance will be compared with the state-of-the-art materials and devices.

Oxide nanoparticles coated with corrosion resistant metals as anode catalyst layer fillers in proton exchange membrane electrolyzers

2019 Fall National Meeting

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