Accelerating water dissociation in bipolar membranes and for electrocatalysis.
basic_science · Level V
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- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 32616669.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1126/science.aaz1487.
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Abstract
Catalyzing water dissociation (WD) into protons and hydroxide ions is important both for fabricating bipolar membranes (BPMs) that can couple different pH environments into a single electrochemical device and for accelerating electrocatalytic reactions that consume protons in neutral to alkaline media. We designed a BPM electrolyzer to quantitatively measure WD kinetics and show that, for metal nanoparticles, WD activity correlates with alkaline hydrogen evolution reaction activity. By combining metal-oxide WD catalysts that are efficient near the acidic proton-exchange layer with those efficient near the alkaline hydroxide-exchange layer, we demonstrate a BPM driving WD with overpotentials of <10 mV at 20 mA·cm<sup>-2</sup> and pure water BPM electrolyzers that operate with an alkaline anode and acidic cathode at 500 mA·cm<sup>-2</sup> with a total electrolysis voltage of ~2.2 V.