Hierarchically conductive electrodes unlock stable and scalable CO2 electrolysis
Name
s41467-024-53523-8.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.95 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
029910b143e2a33f3ba1527adaebdf74
Author(s)
Rufer, Simon
Nitzsche, Michael P
Garimella, Sanjay
Lake, Jack R
Varanasi, Kripa K
Date Issued
November 13, 2024
Journal
Nature Communications
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Citation
Rufer, S., Nitzsche, M.P., Garimella, S. et al. Hierarchically conductive electrodes unlock stable and scalable CO2 electrolysis. Nat Commun 15, 9429 (2024).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Electrochemical CO2 reduction has emerged as a promising CO2 utilization technology, with Gas Diffusion Electrodes becoming the predominant architecture to maximize performance. Such electrodes must maintain robust hydrophobicity to prevent flooding, while also ensuring high conductivity to minimize ohmic losses. Intrinsic material tradeoffs have led to two main architectures: carbon paper is highly conductive but floods easily; while expanded Polytetrafluoroethylene is flooding resistant but non-conductive, limiting electrode sizes to just 5 cm2. Here we demonstrate a hierarchically conductive electrode architecture which overcomes these scaling limitations by employing inter-woven microscale conductors within a hydrophobic expanded Polytetrafluoroethylene membrane. We develop a model which captures the spatial variability in voltage and product distribution on electrodes due to ohmic losses and use it to rationally design the hierarchical architecture which can be applied independent of catalyst chemistry or morphology. We demonstrate C2+ Faradaic efficiencies of ~75% and reduce cell voltage by as much as 0.9 V for electrodes as large as 50 cm2 by employing our hierarchically conductive electrode architecture.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-53523-8
