Electric fields and charge separation for solid oxide fuel cell electrodes
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Skinner, Stephen
Williams, Nicholas
Seymour, Ieuan
Fraggedakis, Dimitrios
Type
Journal Article
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 CO2 on CeO2; O2 on 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.
Date Issued
2022-09-28
Date Acceptance
2022-08-25
Citation
Nano Letters: a journal dedicated to nanoscience and nanotechnology, 2022, 22 (18), pp.7515-7521
ISSN
1530-6984
Publisher
American Chemical Society
Start Page
7515
End Page
7521
Journal / Book Title
Nano Letters: a journal dedicated to nanoscience and nanotechnology
Volume
22
Issue
18
Copyright Statement
© 2022 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society. This article is available open access under a CC-BY Attribution License 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
License URL
Sponsor
Ceres Power Ltd
Engineering & Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC)
Identifier
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c02468
Grant Number
PO21004096
EP/R002010/1
Subjects
DFT
SOFC
electric field
surface potential
thermodynamics
Nanoscience & Nanotechnology
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2022-09-06