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Materials descriptors for advanced water dissociation catalysts in bipolar membranes

Nature Materials volume 23, pages 1421–1427 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

The voltage penalty driving water dissociation (WD) at high current density is a major obstacle in the commercialization of bipolar membrane (BPM) technology for energy devices. Here we show that three materials descriptors, that is, electrical conductivity, microscopic surface area and (nominal) surface-hydroxyl coverage, effectively control the kinetics of WD in BPMs. Using these descriptors and optimizing mass loading, we design new earth-abundant WD catalysts based on nanoparticle SnO2 synthesized at low temperature with high conductivity and hydroxyl coverage. These catalysts exhibit exceptional performance in a BPM electrolyser with low WD overvoltage (ηwd) of 100 ± 20 mV at 1.0 A cm−2. The new catalyst works equivalently well with hydrocarbon proton-exchange layers as it does with fluorocarbon-based Nafion, thus providing pathways to commercializing advanced BPMs for a broad array of electrolysis, fuel-cell and electrodialysis applications.

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Fig. 1: Membrane-potential sensing in a BPM electrode assembly (BPMEA) driving WD.
Fig. 2: Materials design for advanced water-dissociation catalysts.
Fig. 3: Advanced WD catalysts in hydrocarbon and fluorocarbon BPMs.
Fig. 4: Advanced BPMWE and electrodialysis devices.

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Data availability

The data generated from this study and used to prepare the figures in the main manuscript are available with the digital identifier (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.25769388). Further datasets generated during the study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

The work investigating WD catalyst descriptors was supported by the US Office of Naval Research, grant N00014-20-1-2517 (S.W.B.). The design of the new high-performance catalyst was supported by US Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), grant DE-AR0001502. The work applying the new catalyst to electrodialysis and with hydrocarbon cation-exchange membrane layers was supported by ARPA-E grant DE-AR0001540. P.V.S. acknowledges the Fulbright-Nehru postdoctoral fellowship supported by USIEF. K.M.W. and R.J.S. acknowledge support from the Kraton Corporation and the NC State College of Engineering. We acknowledge use of shared instrumentation in the Center for Advanced Materials Characterization in Oregon and the Phil and Penny Knight Campus. J. Razink collected electron-microscopy images. R. Wycisk and J. Doshi at eSpin Technologies are acknowledged for providing SPEEK membranes and for useful technical discussion.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry and the Oregon Center for Electrochemistry, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA

    Sayantan Sasmal, Lihaokun Chen, Prasad V. Sarma, Olivia T. Vulpin & Shannon W. Boettcher

  2. Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering and Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Lihaokun Chen & Shannon W. Boettcher

  3. Energy Storage and Distributed Resources Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Lihaokun Chen & Shannon W. Boettcher

  4. Center for Materials Characterization in Oregon, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA

    Casey R. Simons

  5. Fiber and Polymer Science Program, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA

    Kacie M. Wells

  6. Departments of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering and Materials Science & Engineering and Department of Materials Science & Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA

    Richard J. Spontak

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  1. Sayantan Sasmal
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Contributions

S.S. and S.W.B. conceived the experiments and led the project. S.S. performed most experiments. L.C. developed membrane-sensing experiments and data processing approaches. P.V.S. led the AEM and low-Pt BPM experiments. O.T.V. conceived the thickness measurements and assisted in the BPMED prototype experiment. C.R.S. performed the NMR experiments. K.M.W. and R.J.S. initiated discussions regarding and developed the TESET membrane. S.S. and S.W.B. wrote the manuscript with input from all authors.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Shannon W. Boettcher.

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Competing interests

The authors have filed a patent application titled ‘Dissociation and recombination catalyst layers for reverse and forward-bias bipolar membranes’ (US20230264148A1), on materials reported in this manuscript and are working to commercialize advanced BPMs.

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Nature Materials thanks Christopher G. Arges, Severin Vierrath and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Sasmal, S., Chen, L., Sarma, P.V. et al. Materials descriptors for advanced water dissociation catalysts in bipolar membranes. Nat. Mater. 23, 1421–1427 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-024-01943-8

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