Advancing Electrochemical Efficiency

It’s easy to receive news that Smol­tek has been gran­ted new pat­ents with a shrug or a yawn. After all, such news comes along all the time. Usu­ally, it is a pre­vi­ously known innov­a­tion that has been gran­ted a pat­ent in yet anoth­er coun­try. The ump­teenth in a row. This is, of course, good. But not neces­sar­ily some­thing to write home about. So you’re for­giv­en if you missed the bomb­shell: Smol­tek has been gran­ted pat­ents for three break­through innov­a­tions. We believe these inven­tions will make elec­tro­lyz­er and fuel cell man­u­fac­tur­ers crave our tech­no­logy and know-how even more. Curi­ous? Read on!

Two challenges

The trans­ition to sus­tain­able energy depends on the effi­ciency of elec­tro­chem­ic­al cells – the work­horses behind tech­no­lo­gies such as fuel cells and elec­tro­lyz­ers. How­ever, these essen­tial com­pon­ents face two prob­lems: high con­tact res­ist­ance and rap­id corrosion.

High con­tact res­ist­ance leads to sig­ni­fic­ant energy losses, res­ult­ing in reduced per­form­ance and increased oper­at­ing costs.

Cor­ro­sion erodes the struc­tur­al integ­rity of the elec­tro­chem­ic­al cells, caus­ing them to wear out quickly and require replacement.

All man­u­fac­tur­ers of fuel cells and elec­tro­lyz­ers want to tackle these two chal­lenges. Bet­ter solu­tions are needed.

Guess who is sit­ting on them?

That’s right! Smoltek.

Our super-tal­en­ted research­ers and developers have inven­ted not one but three solu­tions that work togeth­er to deal with these problems.

Three patents

Smoltek’s three pat­ents form a for­mid­able arsen­al against the dual chal­lenges of high con­tact res­ist­ance and cor­ro­sion, mark­ing a sig­ni­fic­ant leap in elec­tro­chem­ic­al cell technology.

Pat­ent SE545845 cov­ers an innov­a­tion we have giv­en the com­pletely unima­gin­at­ive name of ”a sep­ar­at­or plate arrange­ment for an elec­tro­chem­ic­al cell com­pris­ing a nano­struc­ture.” To avoid drop­ping dead of bore­dom when say­ing the name, we use the much sex­i­er unof­fi­cial name: Con­tact Res­ist­ance. This is a mis­nomer, as the innov­a­tion is not about con­tact res­ist­ance but coun­ter­act­ing it. As the offi­cial name sug­gests, this is accom­plished by arran­ging the flow plates in an elec­tro­chem­ic­al cell in a cer­tain way. More about that later.

Pat­ent SE545846 has a much cool­er name: Nano Vel­cro. Sure, it’s not the offi­cial name; it’s as dry as the paper the pat­ent is writ­ten on: “Fuel cell or elec­tro­lyz­er with a con­nect­ive nano­struc­ture.” More inform­a­tion will fol­low on this as well. How­ever, you are cor­rect if you con­clude from the offi­cial name that it is also about redu­cing con­tact resistance.

Pat­ent SE545852 fol­lows and cov­ers also an innov­a­tion to lower con­tact res­ist­ance. (Res­ist­ance is futile!). The offi­cial name does­n’t give much away: “A sep­ar­at­or ele­ment with a coat­ing com­pris­ing nano­struc­tures.” But our unof­fi­cial name is a bit more reveal­ing: Ver­tic­al Graphene. It is sim­il­ar to the first pat­ent, but uses ver­tic­al graphene instead of car­bon nan­ofibers. We’ll get to what that means.

Are you ready to explore the pat­ents a bit further?

Contact Resistance (SE545845)

An elec­tro­chem­ic­al cell is where the magic hap­pens in elec­tro­lyz­ers (elec­tri­city and water become hydro­gen and oxy­gen) and fuel cells (hydro­gen and oxy­gen become elec­tri­city and water). Thus, it’s a crit­ic­al com­pon­ent in many applic­a­tions needed if we are to trans­ition from an energy sys­tem with tons of car­bon emis­sions to a green and clean energy system.

A mem­brane is at the very core of an elec­tro­chem­ic­al cell. PEM elec­tro­lyz­ers and fuel cells use a mem­brane that lets pro­tons through but blocks elec­trons, for­cing them to detour through wires. This is what makes the magic possible.

How­ever, to work, elec­tric­al con­tact between an elec­trode and the sur­face of the mem­brane is required. How hard can it be? Just press an elec­trode against the mem­brane, and it’s done.

Or is it?

Of course, it is not that simple. A lot of water and hydro­gen gas must also fit in the inter­face between the elec­trode and the mem­brane, and if you cre­ate some space for it, the elec­tric­al con­tact is broken.

The way to resolve this is to have elec­tric­ally con­duct­ive por­ous mater­i­al between the elec­trode and the mem­brane. The pores allow water and hydro­gen to pass through while provid­ing path­ways for the cur­rent to flow between the elec­trode and the membrane.

Easy, huh?

No. The dif­fi­culty is to cre­ate a good elec­tric­al con­tact between the elec­tric­ally con­duct­ive por­ous mater­i­al and the mem­brane. And pre­vent the con­tact sur­face from oxid­iz­ing because it is elec­tric­ally insulating.

Enter the stage: Smoltek’s innovation.

If you have been a keen stu­dent, you will recog­nize the solu­tion. We’ve made no secret of it since we applied for the pat­ent. (Inven­tions become pub­lic at the time of applic­a­tion, but in return enjoy pro­tec­tion dur­ing the applic­a­tion period.)

Smoltek’s innov­a­tion is to insert nan­ofibers between the elec­trode and the mem­brane. These are attached to the elec­trode or por­ous mater­i­al, and the tip is stuck into the mem­brane. Elec­tric­ally con­duct­ive car­bon nan­ofibers in elec­tric­al con­tact with the elec­trode and mem­brane reduce con­tact resistance.

Nano Velcro (SE545846)

Do you like Sein­feld? The TV series? I love it. And like many oth­er fans of television’s greatest shows of all time (that’s a sci­entif­ic fact), I can see par­al­lels and sim­il­ar­it­ies every­where between life and the show. In this case, when we talk about Nano Vel­cro, it should be pretty obvi­ous that I’m think­ing of Barney Martin’s line, as Morty Sein­feldt: ”I can’t stand vel­cro. That tear­ing sound.” Unlike Morty, we love vel­cro, at least if they are made of car­bon nan­ofibers and are used to cre­ate strong elec­tric­al con­tact between two lay­ers in an elec­tro­chem­ic­al cell.

For example, let’s return to the con­tact sur­face between an elec­tric­ally con­duct­ive por­ous mater­i­al and the sur­face of a mem­brane. Cur­rent tech­no­logy is to press them togeth­er and hope that there is enough elec­tric­al con­tact. But this has many problems.

On the scale that elec­trons move, there are no smooth sur­faces in per­fect con­tact with each oth­er. Irreg­u­lar­it­ies and grow­ing oxid­a­tion make the con­tact sur­face smal­ler than you might think. There is also a lot of water and gases flow­ing, caus­ing the sur­faces to vibrate, fur­ther deteri­or­at­ing the contact.

In short, it is almost a mir­acle that today’s PEM elec­tro­lyz­ers and fuel cells even work.

This is where our Nano Vel­cro comes in. The idea is to grow car­bon nan­ofibers from both sur­faces and allow them to be mech­an­ic­ally entangled togeth­er, much like a piece of vel­cro. These car­bon nan­ofibers should neither be com­pletely straight nor grow straight out from the sur­face, but they should twist a little and grow at a slight angle. This increases the entan­gle­ment when they are pressed togeth­er. One can even let the car­bon nan­ofibers on one side grow almost par­al­lel to the plane they are attached to, to effect­ively cre­ate mech­an­ic­al interlocking.

This cre­ates lar­ger con­tact sur­faces; each car­bon nan­ofiber has a sur­face area orders of mag­nitude lar­ger than the sur­face it grows on. In addi­tion, the entan­gle­ment cre­ates a mech­an­ic­ally more stable contact.

Vertical Graphene (SE545852)

This innov­a­tion aims at the same thing as the oth­er two: cre­at­ing lar­ger and more stable con­tact sur­faces between an elec­tric­ally con­duct­ive por­ous mater­i­al and the sur­face of a mem­brane. Just like in the first-men­tioned pat­ent (SE545845), nano­struc­tures pro­trud­ing into the mem­brane do the trick. But unlike that, it’s not car­bon nan­ofibers but ver­tic­al graphene that does the job.

Car­bon atoms can bond to each oth­er in many dif­fer­ent ways, cre­at­ing many dif­fer­ent struc­tures. Graphene is one of them.

In graphene, the car­bon atoms form hexagon­al rings, where adja­cent rings share sides and are in the same plane. It looks like a sheet of chick­en wire where the knots are car­bon atoms, and the threads between them are their bonds.

While the “reg­u­lar” graphene chick­en wire grows along the sub­strate, ver­tic­al graphene grows per­pen­dic­u­lar to the sub­strate. They form a chick­en wire fence that twists and turns. It looks like a curved wall. This is why ver­tic­al graphene is also called car­bon nanowalls. They are criss-cross­ing and highly interconnected.

So what’s the point of repla­cing the well-known and trus­ted car­bon nan­ofibers with the new­comer, ver­tic­al graphene? Here’s the tri: this fresh entrant in the nano-world is like car­bon nan­ofibers on ster­oids. All the things that car­bon nan­ofibers do well, they do better:

• Sur­face Area: Extremely high sur­face area due to the ver­tic­al ori­ent­a­tion of the sheets.
• Edge Dens­ity: Very high dens­ity of react­ive edges.
• Con­duct­iv­ity: Good elec­tric­al con­duct­iv­ity, espe­cially with­in the plane of the sheets.
• Mech­an­ic­al Robust­ness: The inter­con­nec­ted sheet struc­ture of ver­tic­al graphene provides good mech­an­ic­al strength and resilience.

In oth­er words, these new kids aren’t just match­ing the old boys – they’re out­play­ing them on many fronts.

A word of caution

I have tried to describe the innov­a­tions covered by the pat­ents in a hope­fully under­stand­able way. There­fore, I have had to sim­pli­fy the descrip­tion and focus on the most imme­di­ate applic­a­tion areas (fuel cells and PEM elec­tro­lyz­ers). There­fore, this descrip­tion does not do full justice to the scope and applic­a­tions of the innovations.

What I mean by this is that the pat­ents pro­tect far more than just improved elec­tric­al con­tact between elec­trode and pro­ton exchange mem­brane with a por­ous trans­port lay­er in between; they pro­tect far more elec­tro­chem­ic­al cells than fuel cells and PEM elec­tro­lyz­ers. For example, they also pro­tect the anion exchange mem­brane (AEM), which may be used in future elec­tro­lyz­ers and vari­ous forms of batteries.

My point is that these three pat­ents give Smol­tek the exclus­ive right for twenty years to dic­tate the con­di­tions for using these types of solu­tions in all pos­sible contexts.

What now?

Life goes on. We con­tin­ue to devel­op our cell mater­i­al for PEM electrolyzers.

In the case of the three pat­ents, they each form a new pat­ent fam­ily. As the pat­ents for the three innov­a­tions are approved in the EU, the US and oth­er coun­tries, the new pat­ent fam­il­ies will grow.

For Smoltek’s share­hold­ers and investors, these pat­ents are more than just a test­a­ment to Smoltek’s unique expert­ise and invent­ive­ness; they rep­res­ent a true stra­tegic advant­age in the grow­ing clean energy market. 

Our com­pany pos­sesses tech­no­logy and know-how that is increas­ingly sought after as the demand for clean energy solu­tions grows. We can safely say that Smol­tek is very well poised to face the future and become a key play­er in the field. 

Don’t you agree?