Stability of Carbon Supported Silver Electrocatalysts for Alkaline Oxygen Reduction and Evolution Reactions

Linge JM, Briega-Martos V, Hutzler A, Fritsch B, Erikson H, Tammeveski K, Cherevko S (2023)

Publication Type: Journal article

Publication year: 2023

Journal

ACS Applied Energy Materials American Chemical Society

DOI: 10.1021/acsaem.3c01717

Abstract

Ag-based electrocatalysts are promising candidates to catalyze the sluggish oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) in anion exchange membrane fuel cells (AEMFC) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in unitized regenerative fuel cells. However, to be competitive with existing technologies, the AEMFC with Ag electrocatalyst must demonstrate superior performance and long-term durability. The latter implies that the catalyst must be stable, withstanding harsh oxidizing conditions. Moreover, since Ag is typically supported by carbon, the strict stability requirements extend to the whole Ag/C catalyst. In this work, Ag supported on Vulcan carbon (Ag/VC) and mesoporous carbon (Ag/MC) materials is synthesized, and their electrochemical stability is studied using a family of complementary techniques. We first employ an online scanning flow cell combined with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (SFC-ICP-MS) to estimate the kinetic dissolution stability window of Ag. Strong correlations between voltammetric features and the dissolution processes are discovered. Very high silver dissolution during the OER renders this material impractical for regenerative fuel cell applications. To address Ag stability during AEMFC load cycles, accelerated stress tests (ASTs) in O2-saturated solutions are carried out in rotating disk electrode (RDE) and rotating ring-disk electrode (RRDE) setups. Besides tracking the ORR performance evolution, an ex situ long-term Ag dissolution study is performed. Moreover, morphological changes in the catalyst/support are tracked by identical-location transmission electron microscopy (RDE-IL-TEM). Voltammetry analysis before and after AST reveals a smaller change in ORR activity for Ag/MC, confirming its higher stability. RRDE results reveal a higher increase in the H2O2 yield for Ag/VC after the ASTs. The RDE-IL-TEM measurements demonstrate different degradation processes that can explain the changes in the long term performance. The results in this work point out that the stability of carbon-supported Ag catalysts depends strongly on the morphology of the Ag nanoparticles, which, in turn, can be tuned depending on the chosen carbon support and synthesis method.

Authors with CRIS profile

Andreas Hutzler

Involved external institutions

University of Tartu EE Estonia (EE) Forschungszentrum Jülich / Research Centre Jülich (FZJ) DE Germany (DE) Helmholtz-Institut Erlangen-Nürnberg für Erneuerbare Energien (HI-ERN) DE Germany (DE)

How to cite

APA:

Linge, J.M., Briega-Martos, V., Hutzler, A., Fritsch, B., Erikson, H., Tammeveski, K., & Cherevko, S. (2023). Stability of Carbon Supported Silver Electrocatalysts for Alkaline Oxygen Reduction and Evolution Reactions. ACS Applied Energy Materials. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsaem.3c01717

MLA:

Linge, Jonas Mart, et al. "Stability of Carbon Supported Silver Electrocatalysts for Alkaline Oxygen Reduction and Evolution Reactions." ACS Applied Energy Materials (2023).

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