Smoltek Hydrogen has finalized design of a Prototype Coater tool for carbon nanofibers

Smol­tek Hydro­gen is work­ing on solv­ing the biggest pain point of PEM elec­tro­lyz­ers – “The Iridi­um prob­lem”. Iridi­um is needed as cata­lyst on the anode side in an elec­tro­lyz­er cell. How­ever, iridi­um is extremely expens­ive and most of all scarce and a lim­ited resource, and the short­age of iridi­um is recog­nized as the single most severe threat towards scal­ing up PEM elec­tro­lyz­ers. For this reas­on, the hydro­gen industry is eager to find a new, game-chan­ging tech­no­logy that can sig­ni­fic­antly reduce the iridi­um load. 

Smol­tek Hydro­gen has a solu­tion to this par­tic­u­lar prob­lem, by intro­du­cing an ultra-thin iridi­um coat­ing on the por­ous trans­port lay­er side instead of the mem­brane, and where the sur­face area first has been enlarged by coat­ing the sur­face with cor­ro­sion pro­tec­ted ver­tic­al car­bon nan­ofibers.
Smol­tek Hydro­gen aims to reduce the iridi­um amount with 95% com­pared to today’s stand­ard mater­i­al (that uses ca 2.5 mg iridium/​cm²), and has recently com­pleted a 1,000 hour dur­ab­il­ity test with only 0.2 mg iridium/​cm² (Read about the test).

Man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­no­lo­gies to enable scale-up of PEM elec­tro­lyz­ers
Besides hav­ing a game chan­ging tech­no­logy, Smol­tek Hydro­gen also need to be able to man­u­fac­ture the elec­tro­lyz­er cell mater­i­al in large volumes. Today the samples are pro­duced with labor­at­ory tech­no­lo­gies, in low quant­it­ies and with typ­ic­al area of only a few square cen­ti­meters, where­as the indus­tri­al man­u­fac­tur­ing concept must be scal­able to the high volumes fore­seen, which is tens of thou­sands of square meters a year, and beyond. 

An import­ant first step towards indus­tri­al­iz­a­tion and com­mer­cial­iz­a­tion of the Smol­tek Hydro­gen elec­tro­lyz­er cell mater­i­al is prac­tic­al val­id­a­tion of the selec­ted concept for the growth of nan­ofibers, since it is a dif­fer­ent type of Plasma Enhanced Chem­ic­al Vapor Depos­ition (PECVD) pro­cess than used today. In order to do this Smol­tek Hydro­gen has, togeth­er with AGC Plasma Tech­no­logy Solu­tions, designed a new ded­ic­ated Pro­to­type Coat­er tool that will be placed in the Chalmers MC2 facil­it­ies in Gothen­burg, where Smol­tek cur­rently has its nan­ofiber fab­ric­a­tion operations.

The Pro­to­type Coat­er is a power­ful tool with small foot­print and will provide an import­ant plat­form for con­tin­ued devel­op­ment of indus­tri­al growth recipes. The ambi­tion with the tool is to com­bine scal­able AGC lin­ear hol­low cath­ode PECVD tech­no­logy and our expert­ise in grow­ing car­bon nan­ofibers. We fine tune dif­fer­ent growth con­di­tions and select the para­met­ers most suit­able for fur­ther scale-up. The tool will also enable us to man­u­fac­ture rep­res­ent­at­ive samples to cus­tom­ers with indus­tri­al scal­able technology.

Shafiq Kabir, Head of Volume Pro­cesses at Smol­tek Hydrogen

Based on the learn­ings from val­id­a­tion of the Pro­to­type Coat­er, Smol­tek Hydro­gen aims to order a Pilot Coat­er, which is a smal­ler ver­sion of a high-volume tool. This is also a cru­cial com­pon­ent of AGC’s busi­ness mod­el, since they guar­an­tee the per­form­ance of the volume machine if their smal­ler coat­er is used to spe­cify its require­ments. The Pilot Coat­er will be used to pro­duce test series for cus­tom­ers as well as for veri­fic­a­tion of the pro­duc­tion tech­no­lo­gies before volume manufacturing.

About AGC
AGC Plasma Tech­no­logy Solu­tions is a new busi­ness unit with­in AGC Glass Europe SA, a European lead­er in flat glass. AGC Plasma Tech­no­logy Solu­tions is provid­ing low-pres­sure plasma coat­ing tech­no­logy and equip­ment. AGC Plasma is an expans­ive team of plasma coat­ing experts spe­cial­ized in innov­at­ive PVD and PECVD applic­a­tions from R&D and new product devel­op­ment all the way through to equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­ing and oper­a­tion­al man­age­ment of mass pro­duc­tion coat­ing plants. Vis­it the web­site www.agc-plasma.com to learn more about the equip­ment and ser­vices offered by AGC Plasma Tech­no­logy Solutions.

People pic­tured in the top photo, from left: Amin Saleeem, Bas­tien Pen­ninckx, Shafik Kabir, Erwan-Axel Mor­ris­son (AGC), Fabi­an Wenger, Jer­oen Schot­saert (AGC), Ellinor Ehrn­berg, Réka Simon-Balint.