The sec­ond episode of Smoltek’s pod­cast Smoltalk is now avail­able on YouTube, Apple Pod­casts, Spo­ti­fy, and wher­ev­er pod­casts are found. In this con­ver­sa­tion, Mag­nus Ander­s­son speaks with Fabi­an Wenger, Head of R&D at Smoltek Hydro­gen, about every­thing from his per­son­al jour­ney to the com­pa­ny’s strate­gic indus­tri­al part­ner­ships and the roadmap ahead.

For those who pre­fer read­ing to lis­ten­ing, this arti­cle cov­ers all the essen­tial insights from their discussion—from Fabi­an’s path from Switzer­land to Gothen­burg, to his thoughts on Smoltek Hydro­gen’s col­lab­o­ra­tions with AGC, Spark Nano, Impact Coat­ings, and Her­aeus Pre­cious Met­als, and the future plans that could reshape the green hydro­gen industry.

Dr. Fabian Wenger

Fabi­an Wenger’s jour­ney to Smoltek began in Switzer­land, where he was born to a Swiss father and Ital­ian moth­er. After com­plet­ing his under­grad­u­ate stud­ies in physics at ETH Zurich, he moved to Swe­den in 1990 to pur­sue his doc­tor­ate at Chalmers Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy in Gothenburg.

“I did my doc­tor­ate in sol­id state physics. The sub­ject was high-tem­per­a­ture super­con­duc­tors,” Fabi­an explains. “That was a top­ic that was very hot, and peo­ple envi­sioned appli­ca­tions like lev­i­tat­ing trains.” While room-tem­per­a­ture super­con­duc­tors remained elu­sive, the research laid foun­da­tions for today’s quan­tum com­put­ing technology.

After a post­doc at Prince­ton’s NEC Research Insti­tute, Fabi­an returned to Swe­den dur­ing the tele­com boom. He spent 25 years in prod­uct devel­op­ment at com­pa­nies includ­ing Eric­s­son before dis­cov­er­ing Smoltek. “From the first con­tacts, I was fas­ci­nat­ed by the fact that through a spin-off from Chalmers, they had invest­ed in a com­plete­ly new type of nanos­truc­ture,” he recalls.

Why hydrogen was chosen as focus area

Smoltek Hydro­gen was orig­i­nal­ly found­ed as Smoltek Inno­va­tion, with the mis­sion of explor­ing busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties for Smoltek’s core competency—growing elec­tri­cal­ly and ther­mal­ly con­duc­tive car­bon nanos­truc­tures with extreme precision—outside the semi­con­duc­tor indus­try that Smoltek Semi was already pur­su­ing. When the team iden­ti­fied green hydro­gen as the most promis­ing appli­ca­tion, the sub­sidiary shift­ed focus and changed its name to Smoltek Hydrogen.

The tim­ing was cru­cial: Swedish indus­try was launch­ing major ini­tia­tives like H2 Green Steel and the Hybrit project, a col­lab­o­ra­tion between LKAB, SSAB, and Vat­ten­fall. “The con­nec­tion between the large sur­face area that these nanofibers can cre­ate and the fact that it could be inter­est­ing for cat­alyt­ic process­es was clear­ly there,” Fabi­an explains. Green hydro­gen offered both a mas­sive mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ty and an urgent need that aligned per­fect­ly with Smoltek’s capabilities.

Carbon nanofibers and the 3D surface effect

The foun­da­tion of Smoltek’s tech­nol­o­gy is decep­tive­ly sim­ple: grow­ing car­bon nanofibers on a sur­face. “That’s the com­mon denom­i­na­tor for every­thing we do, and that cre­ates this 3D sur­face effect,” Fabi­an notes.

This expand­ed sur­face area enables two relat­ed ben­e­fits. First, less pre­cious met­al cat­a­lyst is need­ed to achieve the same reac­tion rates. Sec­ond, the same amount of cat­a­lyst deliv­ers high­er per­for­mance. “It’s either more effi­cient use of the mate­r­i­al or high­er per­for­mance,” Fabi­an summarizes.

The key lies in pre­cise con­trol. Smoltek cre­ates mil­lions of extreme­ly thin fibers on a sur­face in an even, uni­form pat­tern. The pre­cious met­al cat­a­lyst then coats these nanofiber struc­tures, max­i­miz­ing con­tact with the reactants.

PEM electrolysis technology explained

In water elec­trol­y­sis, an elec­tri­cal cur­rent splits water mol­e­cules into hydro­gen and oxy­gen. Sev­er­al tech­nolo­gies exist, but PEM (Pro­ton Exchange Mem­brane) elec­trol­y­sis offers dis­tinct advan­tages: it oper­ates at very high cur­rent den­si­ties, requires less sur­face area, and—critically—can rapid­ly adjust to fluc­tu­at­ing pow­er inputs.

“That’s cru­cial because much of the green ener­gy that we’re now installing isn’t there con­stant­ly,” Fabi­an explains. Wind and solar pow­er vary with con­di­tions, and PEM elec­trolyz­ers can ramp up and down accordingly.

The process works through a care­ful­ly orches­trat­ed mol­e­c­u­lar dance. On the anode side, water mol­e­cules are absorbed by irid­i­um cat­a­lyst, where oxy­gen atoms bind to the sur­face and release hydro­gen ions (pro­tons). These pro­tons migrate through the mem­brane to the cath­ode, where they com­bine to form hydro­gen gas. Mean­while, oxy­gen atoms pair up and exit as oxy­gen gas—safely sep­a­rat­ed from the hydro­gen by the membrane.

The critical role of iridium

For indus­tri­al elec­trolyz­ers that must oper­ate reli­ably for ten or more years, irid­i­um oxide has emerged as the cat­a­lyst of choice. “The best trade-off between sta­bil­i­ty and activ­i­ty is a cat­a­lyst of irid­i­um,” Fabi­an confirms.

The cat­a­lyst dra­mat­i­cal­ly reduces the ener­gy required to split water molecules—and since elec­tric­i­ty is the pri­ma­ry cost dri­ver in hydro­gen pro­duc­tion, cat­a­lyst effi­cien­cy direct­ly impacts the price of green hydrogen.

Iridium scarcity and Smoltek’s breakthrough

Here lies the indus­try’s fun­da­men­tal chal­lenge: only 7 to 9 tons of irid­i­um are mined glob­al­ly each year, and it’s nev­er mined directly—only as a byprod­uct of plat­inum extrac­tion. This scarci­ty threat­ens to bot­tle­neck the entire green hydro­gen indus­try’s growth.

“Our great strength is that we can use incred­i­bly much less irid­i­um than our com­peti­tors,” Fabi­an states. “We’ve announced that we can reach 0.1 mil­ligrams per square cen­time­ter. And that’s where we have our strongest card.”

Smoltek’s Porous Transport Electrode (PTE)

Smoltek has defined its prod­uct as a Porous Trans­port Elec­trode, or PTE. This com­bines a porous tita­ni­um trans­port lay­er, ver­ti­cal­ly grown car­bon nanofibers, a plat­inum cor­ro­sion-pro­tec­tion lay­er, and irid­i­um cat­a­lyst deposit­ed atom by atom.

“I would say that it’s real­ly us who are pio­neers in mak­ing this type of nanos­truc­ture for this appli­ca­tion,” Fabi­an asserts. The com­pa­ny has built a strong patent port­fo­lio around this solution.

Industry shift from CCM to PTE

When Smoltek began devel­op­ing its tech­nol­o­gy, the indus­try was focused almost exclu­sive­ly on CCM (Cat­a­lyst Coat­ed Mem­brane), where cat­a­lysts are applied direct­ly to the mem­brane. Over time, the mar­ket has shifted.

“There’s been a clear shift toward this type of PTE solu­tion, espe­cial­ly on the anode side where you’re work­ing with irid­i­um,” Fabi­an observes. “That’s real­ly where you want such tech­nol­o­gy going for­ward to open up the whole win­dow toward growth and low irid­i­um consumption.”

Cost advantage: 95% iridium reduction

The num­bers tell a com­pelling sto­ry. Smoltek’s tech­nol­o­gy deliv­ers a 95% reduc­tion in irid­i­um usage com­pared to con­ven­tion­al approach­es. But the ben­e­fits extend beyond mate­r­i­al savings.

“Our com­pet­i­tive­ness is already there today on a small scale,” Fabi­an explains. “But in large-scale pro­duc­tion, we could get down to maybe one-sixth of com­pet­ing prod­ucts’ price. So we have an enor­mous com­pet­i­tive advantage.”

This dual benefit—removing the irid­i­um scarci­ty bot­tle­neck while dra­mat­i­cal­ly reduc­ing costs—positions Smoltek to enable indus­try-wide scal­ing of green hydro­gen production.

Strategic industrial partnerships

As a rel­a­tive­ly small com­pa­ny tar­get­ing a huge and grow­ing indus­try, Smoltek has strate­gi­cal­ly part­nered with estab­lished sup­pli­ers to build a scal­able solu­tion. “We bring an inno­va­tion. We show that we have a tech­nol­o­gy that’s scal­able, but then there needs to be a sup­ply chain,” Fabi­an explains.

AGC

AGC, the major Japan­ese indus­tri­al com­pa­ny, brings a plas­ma source tech­nol­o­gy crit­i­cal for grow­ing car­bon nanofibers at indus­tri­al scales. Indus­tri­al elec­trolyz­er elec­trodes mea­sure approx­i­mate­ly half a meter by half a meter. “The tech­nol­o­gy that AGC has guar­an­tees that we can actu­al­ly work with a CVD process that’s scal­able to those areas and also to the vol­umes of tens of thou­sands or hun­dreds of thou­sands of square meters per year,” Fabi­an notes. AGC has also announced invest­ments in hydro­gen indus­try mem­branes, with a major fac­to­ry under construction.

Impact Coatings

Impact Coat­ings is already estab­lished in the hydro­gen indus­try with coat­ing process­es and equip­ment. “Impact Coat­ings is also already in this indus­try with their coat­ing process­es, their machines, they also do some cus­tomer ser­vice, so they’re an impor­tant piece of the puz­zle for us,” Fabi­an explains.

Spark Nano

Spark Nano spe­cial­izes in Atom­ic Lay­er Depo­si­tion (ALD)—building coat­ings atom by atom. For Smoltek, this enables pre­cise plat­inum depo­si­tion for cor­ro­sion pro­tec­tion, max­i­miz­ing uti­liza­tion of pre­cious met­als with rea­son­able cost struc­ture at scale.

Heraeus Precious Metals

Her­aeus, one of Europe’s largest fam­i­ly-owned com­pa­nies with roots in the 1600s, is today a world leader in cat­alyt­ic mate­ri­als. “We’re very proud that we have a part­ner­ship with them and that they also see that this is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate growth for this green hydro­gen econ­o­my,” Fabi­an says.

The part­ner­ship com­bines Smoltek’s car­bon nanofiber exper­tise with Her­aeus’s cat­a­lyst mate­ri­als knowl­edge. Togeth­er, they’re eval­u­at­ing tech­nol­o­gy steps toward indus­tri­al pro­to­types and suf­fi­cient dura­bil­i­ty, with the goal of offer­ing solu­tions to joint customers.

Future iridium reduction potential

The part­ner­ship with Her­aeus opens pos­si­bil­i­ties for alter­na­tive cat­a­lyst for­mu­la­tions. “There are pos­si­bil­i­ties for oth­er ele­ments involved like ruthe­ni­um-irid­i­um. And even oth­er vari­ants,” Fabi­an notes. These com­bi­na­tions could fur­ther opti­mize cat­a­lyst per­for­mance while reduc­ing the depen­den­cy on pure iridium.

When asked how low irid­i­um usage could ulti­mate­ly go, Fabi­an’s answer is strik­ing: “You real­ly don’t see any lim­i­ta­tions down­ward. It opens up a field. You can go to 0.1 and even much low­er through var­i­ous tricks.”

Fuel cell opportunities

While Smoltek Hydro­gen’s pri­ma­ry focus is PEM elec­trol­y­sis for green hydro­gen pro­duc­tion, fuel cells rep­re­sent a close­ly relat­ed oppor­tu­ni­ty. Approx­i­mate­ly 80% of com­po­nents in PEM elec­trolyz­ers are also used in fuel cells—which are essen­tial­ly elec­trolyz­ers run­ning in reverse, con­sum­ing hydro­gen to pro­duce electricity.

Smoltek sees two oppor­tu­ni­ties in fuel cells. First, car­bon nanofibers alone can reduce con­tact resis­tance, improv­ing effi­cien­cy and con­ver­sion rates. Sec­ond, the nanofibers can serve as cat­a­lyst car­ri­ers, typ­i­cal­ly using plat­inum for fuel cell applications.

“We’ve been con­tact­ed by indus­tri­al play­ers. They’ve part­ly bought sam­ples from us and have got­ten good results,” Fabi­an confirms.

Lab facilities: H2 Labs and Chalmers MC2

Smoltek’s devel­op­ment work spans two key facil­i­ties. The com­pa­ny was found­ed at Chalmers Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy’s Depart­ment of Microtech­nol­o­gy and Nanoscience (MC2) twen­ty years ago. Ever since, Smoltek has used MC2’s clean­room and advanced ana­lyt­i­cal equip­ment for crit­i­cal car­bon nanos­truc­ture growth process­es. “MC2 is where we have our roots,” Fabi­an notes.

H2 Labs is Smoltek Hydro­gen’s in-house lab­o­ra­to­ry where the team can test com­plete cells at lab­o­ra­to­ry scale. “That’s where we can test com­plete cells at lab scale […] and extract their max­i­mum per­for­mance and dura­bil­i­ty.” Fabi­an explains.

Roadmap for the next few years

Smoltek Hydro­gen’s plan for the next two years is clear. “Over these two years, we want to con­vince cus­tomers that this is our solu­tion. And that it can be indus­tri­al­ized. So that they have every­thing in hand to use this in seri­ous prod­uct devel­op­ment,” Fabi­an outlines.

This involves con­tin­u­ing to demon­strate per­for­mance across dif­fer­ent cell sizes, stress test­ing over extend­ed peri­ods, and prov­ing the scal­a­bil­i­ty of the under­ly­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing chain.

The tim­ing aligns with indus­try real­i­ties: large elec­trolyz­er fac­to­ries built in recent years haven’t yet reached full capac­i­ty. “For the next gen­er­a­tion, we’re high­ly rel­e­vant to be able to pro­duce next-gen­er­a­tion cost-effec­tive elec­trolyz­ers,” Fabi­an explains. With­in four to five years, the indus­try will reach gigawatt scales—and effi­cient raw mate­r­i­al uti­liza­tion will deter­mine com­pet­i­tive advantage.

Beyond mar­ket tim­ing, hydro­gen offers unique advan­tages for ener­gy resilience. Unlike bat­ter­ies, hydro­gen can store ener­gy across sea­sons. “If the grid goes down, we still need to be able to get ener­gy in some form,” Fabi­an notes. “Hydro­gen and hydro­gen deriv­a­tives are pos­si­ble ways to store ener­gy and actu­al­ly extract elec­tri­cal ener­gy in a crit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion.” As Europe’s focus on ener­gy secu­ri­ty inten­si­fies, this capa­bil­i­ty becomes increas­ing­ly valuable.

Future applications beyond hydrogen

While Smoltek Hydro­gen focus­es on elec­trolyz­ers, the under­ly­ing nan­otech­nol­o­gy plat­form devel­oped by par­ent com­pa­ny Smoltek has broad­er poten­tial. Before Smoltek Hydro­gen nar­rowed its focus to hydro­gen, the team explored sev­er­al oth­er promis­ing markets.

“The com­pa­ny had already worked with super­ca­pac­i­tors, for exam­ple, which sit between capac­i­tors on one side and bat­ter­ies on the oth­er,” Fabi­an recalls. Con­tact resis­tance chal­lenges also affect sol­id-state batteries—“a major mar­ket going forward”—and med­ical appli­ca­tions showed promise as well.

“When you get down to nan­otech­nol­o­gy, there’s a clear advan­tage for many ver­ti­cals,” Fabi­an observes. These appli­ca­tions remain poten­tial oppor­tu­ni­ties for Smoltek to pur­sue through new sub­sidiaries, just as they cre­at­ed Smoltek Hydro­gen to focus on the hydro­gen mar­ket. Suc­cess requires the clas­sic prod­uct-mar­ket fit: “The mar­ket must be there when we have the prod­uct ready and vice versa.”

Investment perspective and megatrends

Fabi­an offers a clear per­spec­tive on Smoltek’s posi­tion­ing: “The posi­tion­ing is excep­tion­al, hav­ing the two biggest mega­trends of our time.”

What he means is that Smoltek’s two sub­sidiaries are each posi­tioned to address one of the defin­ing tech­no­log­i­cal shifts of our era. Smoltek Semi enables con­tin­ued AI devel­op­ment by pro­vid­ing ultra-thin capac­i­tors that ensure sta­ble pow­er sup­ply to the chips per­form­ing the inten­sive cal­cu­la­tions AI requires. Smoltek Hydro­gen enables the green ener­gy tran­si­tion by ensur­ing that suf­fi­cient elec­trolyz­ers can be built at rea­son­able cost—despite the depen­dence on extreme­ly scarce iridium.

“I think an invest­ment in Smoltek is an invest­ment in what’s time­ly and in our future,” Fabi­an concludes.

Watch and listen

The full con­ver­sa­tion between Mag­nus Ander­s­son and Fabi­an Wenger is avail­able on Smoltek’s YouTube chan­nel and as episode two of the Smoltalk pod­cast on Apple Pod­casts, Spo­ti­fy, and oth­er pod­cast plat­forms. For those who want to hear the nuances firsthand—including Fabi­an’s Swiss-accent­ed Swedish—the orig­i­nal record­ing awaits.