
Knowledge Sharing | Design Ideas for Anode Catalyst Layers in Industrial PEMWEs
Catalyst-coated membranes (CCMs) are one of the core components of proton exchange membrane water electrolyzers (PEMWEs). They consist of a proton exchange membrane (PEM) with catalyst layers (CL) coated on both sides. The anode catalyst layer (ACL) is where the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) takes place, involving the breaking of O-H bonds and the formation of O-O bonds. This reaction has slow kinetics and is the efficiency bottleneck of the overall process. Over the past decade, there has been substantial progress in developing highly active acidic OER iridium-based catalysts. However, when these catalysts are transferred onto membrane electrodes (MEAs), they never seem to perform as well as expected. Why is that?




