2025/06/11 by Möhle, Sebastian, Kroschel, Matthias, Strasser, Peter
Energy · Materials Science · #500 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik::530 Physik::530 Physik #500 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik::540 Chemie::540 Chemie und zugeordnete Wissenschaften #600 Technik #Anodic Oxide Films and Nanostructures #Carbon Nanotubes in Composites #Electrocatalysts for Energy Conversion #Inverse Opals #Medizin #PEMWE #angewandte Wissenschaften::620 Ingenieurwissenschaften::620 Ingenieurwissenschaften und zugeordnete Tätigkeiten #electrolysis #hard templating #iridium
paper · doi:10.14279/depositonce-24749
openalex publication_date 2025/06/11 · openalex created_date 2025/11/07 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/01
Proton exchange membrane water electrolysis (PEM-WE) is one of the most promising industrial processes for the generation of green hydrogen. The harsh operating conditions demand highly corrosion-resistant materials. For the anodic oxygen evolution reaction (OER), typically, the rare metal iridium is employed. In order to increase the economic viability of PEM-WE, the reduction in the use of iridium is necessary. According to the recent literature, hard-templated materials based on iridium offer a promising path to accomplish that. Here the development of a synthetic protocol toward porous Ir inverse opal (Ir-IO) bulk catalyst materials, which allow control of the resulting chemical Ir state of the Ir-IO, is reported. Two general modes of the same synthetic approach are compared and it is combined with a variety of heating procedures. This enables not only to achieve the targeted synthesis of each material, but also derive a molecular mechanistic hypothesis accounting for the chemical characteristics of the Ir-IO materials. Furthermore, electrochemical characterization is performed, both on RDE as well as at the single-cell level showing a reduction of the overall cell voltage of 80 mV @ 2 A cm⁻2 compared to a commercial reference material while using only a quarter of the iridium loading.