Volume 20, Issue 26 2309359
Research Article

Self-healable, Tolerant Superaerophobic Coating for Improving Electrochemical Hydrogen Production

Hrisikesh Sarma

Hrisikesh Sarma

Bio-Inspired Polymeric Materials Lab, Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Kamrup, Assam, 781039 India

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Subhankar Mandal

Subhankar Mandal

Centre for Nanotechnology, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Kamrup, Assam, 781039 India

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Angana Borbora

Angana Borbora

Bio-Inspired Polymeric Materials Lab, Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Kamrup, Assam, 781039 India

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Jaysri Das

Jaysri Das

Bio-Inspired Polymeric Materials Lab, Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Kamrup, Assam, 781039 India

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Saurav Kumar

Saurav Kumar

Bio-Inspired Polymeric Materials Lab, Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Kamrup, Assam, 781039 India

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Uttam Manna

Corresponding Author

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

E-mail: [email protected]

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First published: 20 January 2024
Citations: 5

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.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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