Journal article
A carbon-free, precious-metal-free, high-performance O-2 electrode for regenerative fuel cells and metal-air batteries
Energy & environmental science, v 7(6), pp 2017-2024
01 Jun 2014
Featured in Collection : UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
Abstract
The development of high-performance and cost-effective electrodes for oxygen evolution and oxygen reduction is critical for enabling the use of energy storage devices based on O-2-H2O chemistries such as metal-air batteries and unitized regenerative fuel cells (URFCs). Herein, we report a precious-metal-free and carbon-free O-2 electrode synthesized via electrodeposition of manganese oxide (MnOx) on a stainless steel (SS) substrate followed by high-temperature calcination at 480 degrees C. The MnOx-SS electrode displays high oxygen reduction and water oxidation activities when tested in an electrochemical cell, comparable to that of a precious-metal based electrode, Pt/C-SS. Accelerated durability testing reveals the excellent stability of the MnOx-SS electrode compared to both the Pt/C-SS electrode and a carbon-based electrode with MnOx and Ni catalysts. This can be rationalized by the carbon-free nature of the MnOx-SS electrode which circumvents carbon corrosion at the high electrochemical potentials during water oxidation and O-2 reduction. Integrating the MnOx-SS electrode as the O-2 electrode into an anion exchange membrane (AEM) URFC produces round-trip efficiencies of 42-45% at 20 mA cm(-2) over 10 cycles, and exhibits significantly enhanced durability compared to the carbon-based analogue. This work demonstrates the MnOx-SS electrode's potential for use as a high performance, scalable, precious-metal-free and carbon-free O-2 electrode in AEM-URFCs and metal-air batteries.
Metrics
Details
- Title
- A carbon-free, precious-metal-free, high-performance O-2 electrode for regenerative fuel cells and metal-air batteries
- Creators
- Jia Wei Desmond Ng - Stanford UniversityMaureen Tang - Stanford UniversityThomas F. Jaramillo - Stanford University
- Publication Details
- Energy & environmental science, v 7(6), pp 2017-2024
- Publisher
- Royal Soc Chemistry
- Number of pages
- 8
- Grant note
- TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy at Stanford University Agency of Science, Technology, and Research (A* STAR), Singapore; Agency for Science Technology & Research (ASTAR)
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Chemical and Biological Engineering
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000336831700025
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-84901374875
- Other Identifier
- 991019299102604721
UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
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InCites Highlights
Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:
- Web of Science research areas
- Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
- Energy & Fuels
- Engineering, Chemical
- Environmental Sciences