Publication date: 26th March 2026
Proton exchange membrane water electrolysers offer a highly promising route towards producing green hydrogen. Their solid electrolytes and relatively low temperature operation make them particularly amenable to coupling with intermittent renewables. Their long term scale up is constrained by the use of oxides based on scarce precious metals at the anode to drive O2 evolution. Ruthenium oxide is the most active catalyst, but suffers from poor stabiity. Iridium oxide exhibits improved stability but lower activity.
In this contribution I will present a series of studies where we have investigated the factors that enable iridium oxide and ruthenium oxide to exhibit superior catalytic performance. Our studies include electrochemical measurements coupled to optical spectroscopy, surface X-ray diffraction, electrochemistry mass spectrometry, inductively coupled mass spectrometry, X-ray absorption spectroscopy and density functional theory. We have investigated the catalysts in multiple forms, from single crystals to commercial catalysts to well defined nanoparticles. We provide a holisitic view of the factors controlling the performance.
