Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, the Materials Science Institute, and the Oregon Center for Electrochemistry, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403, USA.
Science. 2020 Aug 28;369(6507):1099-1103. doi: 10.1126/science.aaz1487. Epub 2020 Jul 2.
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 and pure water BPM electrolyzers that operate with an alkaline anode and acidic cathode at 500 mA·cm with a total electrolysis voltage of ~2.2 V.
催化水的解离（WD）为质子和氢氧根离子对于制造能够将不同 pH 环境耦合到单个电化学装置中的双极膜（BPM）以及加速在中性至碱性介质中消耗质子的电催化反应都很重要。我们设计了一个 BPM 电解槽来定量测量 WD 动力学，并表明对于金属纳米粒子，WD 活性与碱性析氢反应活性相关。通过将在酸性质子交换层附近具有高效性的金属氧化物 WD 催化剂与在碱性氢氧根交换层附近具有高效性的催化剂相结合，我们展示了一种 BPM，其在 20 mA·cm 时的过电势小于 10 mV，并且在 500 mA·cm 时使用碱性阳极和酸性阴极的纯水 BPM 电解槽的总电解电压约为 2.2 V。
