Roll-to-Roll Production of Electrocatalysts Achieving High-Current Alkaline Water Splitting.

Scalable production of electrocatalysts capable of performing high-current water splitting is crucial to support green energy utilization. We adopted acidic redox-assisted deposition (ARD) to realize the continuous roll-to-roll fabrication of a strongly adherent cobalt manganese oxyhydroxide (CMOH) film on Ni foam under ambient conditions in water. The as-fabricated products show uniform CMOH coverage and oxygen evolution activities with dimensions as large as 5 m length by 0.25 m width. Also, we converted CMOH into a metallic form (denoted as CM) with the preserved high adhesion to serve as a high-current hydrogen evolution electrocatalyst. Our results reveal that the insufficient adhesion of powder forms electrocatalysts (i.e., Pt and RuO2 as benchmarks), even with the binder, at high-current electrolysis (>1000 mA) can be solved using the fabricated CM||CMOH cell. With an active area of 1 cm × 1 cm assembly in anion exchange membrane (AEM) electrolyzers, we observed the remarkable record of alkaline electrolysis stably at 5000 mA. This result established a new benchmark record on the high-current water splitting research.

Micro-droplet Trapping and Manipulation: Understanding Aerosol Better for a Healthier Environment.

Understanding the physicochemical properties and heterogeneous processes of aerosols is key not only to elucidate the impacts of aerosols on the atmosphere and humans but also to exploit their further applications, especially for a healthier environment. Experiments that allow for spatially control of single aerosol particles and investigations on the fundamental properties and heterogeneous chemistry at the single-particle level have flourished during the last few decades, and significant breakthroughs in recent years promise better control and novel applications aimed at resolving key issues in aerosol science. Here we propose graphene oxide (GO) aerosols as prototype aerosols containing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and GO can behave as two-dimensional surfactants which could modify the interfacial properties of aerosols. We describe the techniques of trapping single particles and furthermore the current status of the optical spectroscopy and chemistry of GO. The current applications of these single-particle trapping techniques are summarized and interesting future applications of GO aerosols are discussed.