Electric Fields and Charge Separation for Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Electrodes

Nicholas J. Williams; Ieuan D. Seymour; Dimitrios Fraggedakis; Stephen J. Skinner

doi:10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c02468

Electric Fields and Charge Separation for Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Electrodes

Nicholas J. Williams^*, Ieuan D. Seymour, Dimitrios Fraggedakis, Stephen J. Skinner

^*Corresponding author for this work

Chemistry

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

5 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Activation losses at solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) electrodes have been widely attributed to charge transfer at the electrode surface. The electrostatic nature of electrode-gas interactions allows us to study these phenomena by simulating an electric field across the electrode-gas interface, where we are able to describe the activation overpotential using density functional theory (DFT). The electrostatic responses to the electric field are used to approximate the behavior of an electrode under electrical bias and have found a correlation with experimental data for three different reduction reactions at mixed ionic-electronic conducting (MIEC) electrode surfaces (H₂O and CO₂on CeO₂; O₂on LaFeO₃). In this work, we demonstrate the importance of decoupled ion-electron transfer and charged adsorbates on the performance of electrodes under nonequilibrium conditions. Finally, our findings on MIEC-gas interactions have potential implications in the fields of energy storage and catalysis.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	7515-7521
Number of pages	7
Journal	Nano Letters
Volume	22
Issue number	18
Early online date	6 Sept 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c02468
Publication status	Published - 28 Sept 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported by Ceres Power Ltd. I.D.S. and S.J.S. acknowledge the EPSRC for funding through the award of grant EP/R002010/1. D.F. (dfrag) acknowledges support from the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science at the University of California, Berkeley. The authors thank Professor Jan Rossmeisl for fruitful discussions of this work throughout the project.

Data Availability Statement

The Supporting Information is available free of charge at https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c02468

Keywords

DFT
electric field
SOFC
surface potential
thermodynamics

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Cite this

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abstract = "Activation losses at solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) electrodes have been widely attributed to charge transfer at the electrode surface. The electrostatic nature of electrode-gas interactions allows us to study these phenomena by simulating an electric field across the electrode-gas interface, where we are able to describe the activation overpotential using density functional theory (DFT). The electrostatic responses to the electric field are used to approximate the behavior of an electrode under electrical bias and have found a correlation with experimental data for three different reduction reactions at mixed ionic-electronic conducting (MIEC) electrode surfaces (H2O and CO2on CeO2; O2on LaFeO3). In this work, we demonstrate the importance of decoupled ion-electron transfer and charged adsorbates on the performance of electrodes under nonequilibrium conditions. Finally, our findings on MIEC-gas interactions have potential implications in the fields of energy storage and catalysis.",

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note = "Funding Information: This work was supported by Ceres Power Ltd. I.D.S. and S.J.S. acknowledge the EPSRC for funding through the award of grant EP/R002010/1. D.F. (dfrag) acknowledges support from the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science at the University of California, Berkeley. The authors thank Professor Jan Rossmeisl for fruitful discussions of this work throughout the project.",

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AU - Seymour, Ieuan D.

AU - Fraggedakis, Dimitrios

AU - Skinner, Stephen J.

N1 - Funding Information: This work was supported by Ceres Power Ltd. I.D.S. and S.J.S. acknowledge the EPSRC for funding through the award of grant EP/R002010/1. D.F. (dfrag) acknowledges support from the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science at the University of California, Berkeley. The authors thank Professor Jan Rossmeisl for fruitful discussions of this work throughout the project.

PY - 2022/9/28

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N2 - Activation losses at solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) electrodes have been widely attributed to charge transfer at the electrode surface. The electrostatic nature of electrode-gas interactions allows us to study these phenomena by simulating an electric field across the electrode-gas interface, where we are able to describe the activation overpotential using density functional theory (DFT). The electrostatic responses to the electric field are used to approximate the behavior of an electrode under electrical bias and have found a correlation with experimental data for three different reduction reactions at mixed ionic-electronic conducting (MIEC) electrode surfaces (H2O and CO2on CeO2; O2on LaFeO3). In this work, we demonstrate the importance of decoupled ion-electron transfer and charged adsorbates on the performance of electrodes under nonequilibrium conditions. Finally, our findings on MIEC-gas interactions have potential implications in the fields of energy storage and catalysis.

AB - Activation losses at solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) electrodes have been widely attributed to charge transfer at the electrode surface. The electrostatic nature of electrode-gas interactions allows us to study these phenomena by simulating an electric field across the electrode-gas interface, where we are able to describe the activation overpotential using density functional theory (DFT). The electrostatic responses to the electric field are used to approximate the behavior of an electrode under electrical bias and have found a correlation with experimental data for three different reduction reactions at mixed ionic-electronic conducting (MIEC) electrode surfaces (H2O and CO2on CeO2; O2on LaFeO3). In this work, we demonstrate the importance of decoupled ion-electron transfer and charged adsorbates on the performance of electrodes under nonequilibrium conditions. Finally, our findings on MIEC-gas interactions have potential implications in the fields of energy storage and catalysis.

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Electric Fields and Charge Separation for Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Electrodes

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Data Availability Statement

Keywords

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