(337ax) Advancing Water Electrolysis By Improving Precious Metal Utilization in Oxygen Evolution Catalysts

Research Interests:
Energy Storage, Electrocatalysis, Battery Systems, Analytical Chemistry, Characterization Technique and Tool Development, Electrochemical System Scale-up

Presenting Project:
To combat climate change, we need to rethink energy production and storage to decarbonize our global economy. Hydrogen gas is a globally critical chemical that is currently produced via steam reformation processes, which emit over 80 million tons of carbon dioxide each year. Alternatively, hydrogen gas can be produced via carbon-free water electrolysis using proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzers. However, significant further optimization is needed to enable their wide-scale adoption. One major hurtle for PEM electrolyzer scale-up is optimization of stable, active, and affordable catalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER), which occurs under a harsh oxidative and acidic environment. While current commercial electrolyzers largely use Iridium (Ir) metal or oxide to perform OER, my graduate work focuses on development of more stable and active catalyst materials with reduced Ir content that can outperform conventional catalysts at significantly lower costs. By performing a wide variety of electrochemical and materials characterization, I aim to uncover key fundamental structure-function relationships between electronic and geometric structure properties of Ir-based catalyst materials and their OER performance. Additionally, I have focused on the development and assessment of stability and activity benchmarking practices and reporting standards for OER catalyst material candidates. In order to meaningful compare catalyst performance across materials with relevance to ultimate application, I have developed standard protocols for researchers measuring and reporting OER catalyst activity and stability metrics. Ultimately, I aim to improve the reliability and robustness of OER catalysis research in order to advance electrolyzer development and wide-scale adoption for green hydrogen production.