Talk by Aliaksander Bandarenko
Tenure-Track Professor, Energy Conversion and Storage, Department of Physics, Technische Universität München, München, Germany.
Abstract
Electrocatalysis normally tries to find a link between the electrode surface structure, its composition and the resulting activity to improve the performance of electrolyzers, fuel cells, and batteries. However, this field currently encounters certain unexpected obstacles related to the prediction and explanation of a big influence of seemingly inert electrolyte components on the activity. In the presentation, results of systematic investigations of various electrocatalytic systems using a unique laser-induced current transient technique are discussed to approach the answer to a fundamental question: why can electrolytes control the activity so drastically? Different metal electrodes immersed in acidic solutions of different pHs and in near-to-neutral electrolytes containing Na+ and K+ served as model systems.