Less is more: Why an economical Iridium catalyst works so well

Different chemical environments explored

10-Dec-2024 - Iridium-based catalysts are needed to produce hydrogen using water electrolysis. Now, a team at HZB has shown that the newly developed P2X catalyst, which requires only a quarter of the Iridium, is as efficient and stable over time as the best commercial catalyst. Measurements at BESSY II have ...

Green hydrogen: MXenes shows talent as catalyst for oxygen evolution

Catalysts based on MXenes are more stable and efficient than conventional catalysts: Investigations are now revealing the reasons for this

12-Sep-2024 - The MXene class of materials has many talents. An international team led by HZB chemist Michelle Browne has now demonstrated that MXenes, properly functionalised, are excellent catalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction in electrolytic water splitting. They are more stable and efficient than the ...

Freeze casting - a guide to creating hierarchically structured materials

Diverse applications not only in biomedicine, but also in engineering, from new catalysts to highly porous battery electrodes

30-Apr-2024 - Freeze casting is an elegant, cost-effective manufacturing technique to produce highly porous materials with custom-designed hierarchical architectures, well-defined pore orientation, and multifunctional surface structures. Freeze-cast materials are suitable for many applications, from ...

Fuel Cells: Oxidation processes of phosphoric acid revealed by tender X-rays

Options for increasing the lifetime and efficiency of fuel cells

05-Apr-2024 - The interactions between phosphoric acid and the platinum catalyst in high-temperature PEM fuel cells are more complex than previously assumed. Experiments at BESSY II with tender X-rays have decoded the multiple oxidation processes at the platinum-electrolyte interface. The results indicate that ...

Green hydrogen: Improving the stability of iridium catalysts with titanium oxides

High relevance for practical use

18-Dec-2023 - Anodes for the electrolytic splitting of water are usually iridium-based materials. In order to increase the stability of the iridium catalyst, a team at HZB and a group at HI-ERN have now produced a so-called material library: a sample in which the concentration of iridium and titanium oxides is ...

Surface analysis of catalyst particles in aqueous solutions

The results are relevant for the development of efficient photoelectrodes for the production of green hydrogen

25-Jul-2023 - Green hydrogen can be produced directly in a photoelectrochemical cell, splitting water with solar energy. However, this requires the development of super-efficient photoelectrodes that need to combine many talents at the same time: They must be excellent at converting sunlight into electricity, ...

Electrocatalysis under the atomic force microscope

More insights with AFM

17-Mar-2023 - A further development in atomic force microscopy now makes it possible to simultaneously image the height profile of nanometre-fine structures as well as the electric current and the frictional force at solid-liquid interfaces. A team from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) and the Fritz Haber ...

Electrocatalysis: Iron and Cobalt Oxyhydroxides examined at BESSY II

20-Feb-2023 - A team led by Dr. Prashanth W. Menezes (HZB/TU-Berlin) has now gained insights into the chemistry of one of the most active anode catalysts for green hydrogen production. They examined a series of Cobalt-Iron Oxyhydroxides at BESSY II and were able to determine the oxidation states of the active ...

Nanodiamonds can be activated as photocatalysts with sunlight

These inexpensive materials could be a key to further processing CO₂ into valuable hydrocarbons with sunlight in the future

02-Dec-2022 - Nanodiamond materials have potential as low-cost photocatalysts. But until now, such carbon nanoparticles required high-energy UV light to become active. The DIACAT consortium has therefore produced and analysed variations of nanodiamond materials. The work shows: If the surface of the ...

Photocatalysis: Processes in charge separation recorded experimentally

The results provide clues to increase the efficiency of photocatalysts

11-Nov-2022 - Certain metal oxides are considered good candidates for photocatalysts to produce green hydrogen with sunlight. A Chinese team has now published exciting results on copper(I) oxide particles in Nature, to which a method developed at HZB contributed significantly. Transient surface photovoltage ...