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Sarma H, Mandal S, Borbora A, Das J, Kumar S, Manna U. Self-healable, Tolerant Superaerophobic Coating for Improving Electrochemical Hydrogen Production. SMALL (WEINHEIM AN DER BERGSTRASSE, GERMANY) 2024:e2309359. [PMID: 38243839 DOI: 10.1002/smll.202309359] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/17/2023] [Revised: 11/25/2023] [Indexed: 01/22/2024]
Abstract
Gas-evolving electrodes often suffer from the blocking of catalytic active sites-due to unwanted and unavoidable adhesion of generated gas bubbles, which elevates the overpotential for the electrochemical hydrogen evolution reaction (HER)- by raising the resistance of the electrode. Here, a catalyst-free and self-healable superaerophobic coating having ultra-low bubble adhesion is introduced for achieving significantly depleted overpotentials of 209 and 506 mV at both low (50 mA cm-2 ) and high (500 mA cm-2 ) current densities, respectively, compared to a bare nickel-foam electrode. The optimized coating ensured an early detachment of the generated tiny (0.8 ± 0.1 mm) gas bubble-and thus, prevented the undesired rise in resistance of the coated electrode. The systematic association of physical (i.e., ionic interactions, H-bonding, etc.) cross-linkage, β-amino ester type covalent cross-linkage and reinforced halloysite nano clay enables the design of such functional material embedded with essential characteristics-including improved mechanical (toughness of 63.7 kJ m-3 , and tensile modulus of 26 kPa) property and chemical (extremes of pH (1 and 14), salinity, etc.) stability, rapid (<10 min) self-healing ability (even at alkaline condition) and desired bubble-wettability (bubble contact angle of 158.2 ± 0.2° ) with ultralow force (4.2 ± 0.4 µN) of bubble adhesion.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hrisikesh Sarma
- Bio-Inspired Polymeric Materials Lab, Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Kamrup, Assam, 781039, India
| | - Subhankar Mandal
- Centre for Nanotechnology, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Kamrup, Assam, 781039, India
| | - Angana Borbora
- Bio-Inspired Polymeric Materials Lab, Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Kamrup, Assam, 781039, India
| | - Jaysri Das
- Bio-Inspired Polymeric Materials Lab, Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Kamrup, Assam, 781039, India
| | - Saurav Kumar
- Bio-Inspired Polymeric Materials Lab, Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Kamrup, Assam, 781039, India
| | - Uttam Manna
- Bio-Inspired Polymeric Materials Lab, Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Kamrup, Assam, 781039, India
- Centre for Nanotechnology, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Kamrup, Assam, 781039, India
- School of Health Science & Technology, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Kamrup, Assam, 781039, India
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