electrolysis

Enabling a ‘hydrogen economy’ requires developing fuel cells satisfying economic constraints, reasonable operating costs and long-term stability. The fuel cell is an electrochemical device that converts chemical energy into electricity by recombining water from H₂ and O₂, allowing to generate environmentally-friendly power for e.g. cars or houses. However, upscaling anion-exchange membrane fuel cells (AEMFCs) is hindered by the slow kinetics of hydrogen oxidation reaction (HOR) at the anode.
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Water electrolysis has the potential to become the major technology for the production of the high amount of green hydrogen that is necessary for its widespread application in a decarbonized economy. The bottleneck of this electrochemical reaction is the anodic partial reaction, the oxygen evolution reaction (OER), which is sluggish and hence requires efficient catalysts. We use electrochemical in situ spectroscopy techniques to study this reaction in detail. more

Video interview with Stefan Wippermann about his latest research results more

It is very challenging to simulate electron-transfer reactions under potential control within high-level electronic structure theory, e. g. to study electrochemical and electrocatalytic reaction mechanisms. We develop a novel method to sample the canonical NVTΦ or NpTΦ ensemble at constant electrode potential in ab initio molecular dynamics simulations. Our approach is general and can be applied with any standard density-functional simulation package. more

Our project aims at obtaining a detailed atomistic understanding of electrochemical interfaces from first principles. more