A key chemical reaction—in which the movement of protons between the surface of an electrode and an electrolyte drives an electric current—is a critical step in many energy technologies, including fuel cells and the electrolyzers used to produce hydrogen gas.
The research paper is published in the journal Nature Chemistry.
“Our advance in this paper was studying and understanding the nature of how these electrons and protons couple at a surface site, which is relevant for catalytic reactions that are important in the context of energy conversion devices or catalytic reactions,” says Yogesh Surendranath, a professor of chemistry and chemical engineering at MIT and the senior author of the study.
Among their findings, the researchers were able to trace exactly how changes in the pH of the electrolyte solution surrounding an electrode affect the rate of proton motion and electron flow within the electrode.
MIT graduate student Noah Lewis is the lead author of the paper. Ryan Bisbey, a former MIT postdoc; Karl Westendorff, an MIT graduate student; and Alexander Soudackov, a research scientist at Yale University, are also authors of the paper.
2024-01-16 15:41:03
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