Ionomer-free and recyclable porous-transport electrode for high-performing proton-exchange-membrane water electrolysis.

Clean hydrogen production requires large-scale deployment of water-electrolysis technologies, particularly proton-exchange-membrane water electrolyzers (PEMWEs). However, as iridium-based electrocatalysts remain the only practical option for PEMWEs, their low abundance will become a bottleneck for a sustainable hydrogen economy. Herein, we propose high-performing and durable ionomer-free porous transport electrodes (PTEs) with facile recycling features enabling Ir thrifting and reclamation. The ionomer-free porous transport electrodes offer a practical pathway to investigate the role of ionomer in the catalyst layer and, from microelectrode measurements, point to an ionomer poisoning effect for the oxygen evolution reaction. The ionomer-free porous transport electrodes demonstrate a voltage reduction of > 600 mV compared to conventional ionomer-coated porous transport electrodes at 1.8 A cm-2 and <0.1 mgIr cm-2, and a voltage degradation of 29 mV at average rate of 0.58 mV per 1000-cycles after 50k cycles of accelerated-stress tests at 4 A cm-2. Moreover, the ionomer-free feature enables facile recycling of multiple components of PEMWEs, which is critical to a circular clean hydrogen economy.

Nitrogen adsorption data, FIB-SEM tomography and TEM micrographs of neutron-irradiated superfine grain graphite.

This manuscript provides raw nitrogen gas adsorption data, images and videos obtained from a technique that combines Focused Ion Beam (FIB) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) known as FIB-SEM tomography and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) micrographs. This collection of data is useful for characterization of the effects of high fluence neutron irradiation in nuclear graphite as described in the associated manuscript, "Mesopores development in superfine grain graphite neutron-irradiated at high fluence" (Contescu et al., 2019). Nitrogen adsorption isotherms at 77 K are provided for graphite samples before and after neutron irradiation at 300, 450, and 750 °C at fluences before and after turnaround. FIB-SEM tomography reveals porosity of unirradiated and irradiated samples. Using this technique, four data sets were obtained, of which the first three are presented in video format, whereas the fourth one is a series of images provided in raw format unique to this manuscript. All microscopy data document the microstructure, surface area and porosity of superfine grain graphite G347A (Tokai Carbon, Japan) before irradiation and irradiated after turnaround at 400 °C. TEM micrographs provide unique information on irradiation damage at high neutron fluence (>27. 8 displacements per atom, dpa) in the microstructure and crystal lattice of graphite. Additional TEM micrographs are provided here, which do not duplicate the research paper published elsewhere (Contescu et al., 2019). These data sets are unique, as samples at high irradiation doses have never been measured or imaged before with the aforementioned techniques.