Highly quaternized polystyrene ionomers for high performance anion exchange membrane water electrolysers

Dongguo Li, Eun Joo Park, Wenlei Zhu, Qiurong Shi, Yang Zhou, Hangyu Tian, Yuehe Lin (), Alexey Serov, Barr Zulevi, Ehren Donel Baca, Cy Fujimoto, Hoon T. Chung and Yu Seung Kim ()
Additional contact information
Dongguo Li: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Eun Joo Park: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Wenlei Zhu: Washington State University
Qiurong Shi: Washington State University
Yang Zhou: Washington State University
Hangyu Tian: Washington State University
Yuehe Lin: Washington State University
Alexey Serov: Pajarito Powder LLC
Barr Zulevi: Pajarito Powder LLC
Ehren Donel Baca: Sandia National Laboratories
Cy Fujimoto: Sandia National Laboratories
Hoon T. Chung: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Yu Seung Kim: Los Alamos National Laboratory

Nature Energy, 2020, vol. 5, issue 5, 378-385

Abstract: Abstract Alkaline anion exchange membrane (AEM) electrolysers to produce hydrogen from water are still at an early stage of development, and their performance is far lower than that of systems based on proton exchange membranes. Here, we report an ammonium-enriched anion exchange ionomer that improves the performance of an AEM electrolyser to levels approaching that of state-of-the-art proton exchange membrane electrolysers. Using rotating-disk electrode experiments, we show that a high pH (>13) in the electrode binder is the critical factor for improving the activity of the hydrogen- and oxygen-evolution reactions in AEM electrolysers. Based on this observation, we prepared and tested several quaternized polystyrene electrode binders in an AEM electrolyser. Using the binder with the highest ionic concentration and a NiFe oxygen evolution catalyst, we demonstrated performance of 2.7 A cm−2 at 1.8 V without a corrosive circulating alkaline solution. The limited durability of the AEM electrolyser remains a challenge to be addressed in the future.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-020-0577-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natene:v:5:y:2020:i:5:d:10.1038_s41560-020-0577-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nenergy/

DOI: 10.1038/s41560-020-0577-x

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Energy is currently edited by Fouad Khan

More articles in Nature Energy from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().