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Smoltek Hydrogenated AGC at the Smoltek office

Smoltek Hydrogen is verifying its technology for high-volume manufacturing

Smoltek Hydrogen has placed an order for the design and engineering of a Prototype Coater for industrial growth of carbon nanostructures. The purpose is to verify that the nanostructures can be grown using the equipment from AGC Plasma Technology Solutions that has been selected for future mass production – a Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD) tool that can be configured for substrates of several square meters.

November 24, 2023

PEM elec­trolyz­ers are equip­ment used to make hydro­gen. They work with elec­tric­i­ty and use irid­i­um as cat­a­lyst to split water mol­e­cules into hydro­gen and oxy­gen, and they will play an impor­tant role to reduce our car­bon foot­print, since the elec­trolyz­ers can make the pro­duc­tion of e.g., steel, fer­til­iz­ers, and fuels for heavy trans­port fos­sil free. 

The PEM elec­trolyz­er has sev­er­al advan­tages over oth­er elec­trolyz­er types. The rapid start and stop times make it oper­ate effi­cient­ly togeth­er with inter­mit­tent elec­tric­i­ty sources (such as wind- and solar-pow­er). This flex­i­bil­i­ty means that the PEM elec­trolyz­er can pro­duce cheap fos­sil-free hydro­gen on windy and sun­ny days, when the elec­tric­i­ty prices are low. 

The hydro­gen can then be stored and used when need­ed, for exam­ple in the indus­try, or be turned back into elec­tric­i­ty again. This flex­i­bil­i­ty and cost advan­tage make it attrac­tive to scale-up the pro­duc­tion of PEM elec­trolyz­ers, even though they today use large amounts of the scarce met­al irid­i­um as catalyst.

Because irid­i­um is such a lim­it­ed resource, reduc­ing its use in the elec­trolyz­ers is an absolute must, oth­er­wise the scale-up of PEM elec­trolyz­ers will be too expen­sive. Already today the irid­i­um price is around SEK 2 mil­lion and is expect­ed to reach around SEK 8 mil­lion by 2030.

This requires new mate­r­i­al engi­neer­ing solu­tions for elec­trolyz­er cells. Like the one Smoltek Hydro­gen is in the midst of devel­op­ing. It is a new cell mate­r­i­al that sub­stan­tial­ly will reduce the amount of irid­i­um in the elec­trolyz­er cell.

The devel­op­ment of Smoltek Hydrogen’s elec­trolyz­er cell mate­r­i­al (ECM) is advanc­ing accord­ing to plan, which is to low­er the amount of irid­i­um in the elec­trolyz­er cell towards 0.1 mg/​cm2. As of now the com­pa­ny has pro­duced the same amount of hydro­gen as a stan­dard mate­r­i­al (that uses 2.5 mg iridium/​cm2) with only 0.5 mg iridium/​cm2 and will most cer­tain­ly reach the goal of the year, which is to have an even low­er irid­i­um loading. 

First steps towards indus­tri­al man­u­fac­tur­ing of the cell mate­r­i­al
Besides the tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ment, Smoltek Hydro­gen is work­ing in par­al­lel with devel­op­ment of an indus­tri­al man­u­fac­tur­ing con­cept for the cell mate­r­i­al. 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.

As a first step towards indus­tri­al man­u­fac­tur­ing, prac­ti­cal val­i­da­tion of the select­ed con­cept for the growth of nanos­truc­tures is need­ed, since it is a slight­ly dif­fer­ent type of Chem­i­cal Vapor Depo­si­tion (CVD) process than used today. In order to do this Smoltek Hydro­gen has placed an order with AGC Plas­ma Tech­nol­o­gy Solu­tions for the design and engi­neer­ing of a new ded­i­cat­ed Pro­to­type Coater tool. Smoltek has explored sev­er­al dif­fer­ent con­cepts and the select­ed PECVD tech­nol­o­gy is expect­ed to work well for Smoltek’s growth process.

Smoltek and AGC Plas­ma Tech­nol­o­gy Solu­tions will togeth­er design a Pro­to­type Coater tool that can mir­ror the out­put of full-size equip­ment. It will be placed in the Chalmers MC2 facil­i­ties in Gothen­burg, where Smoltek cur­rent­ly has its nanos­truc­ture fab­ri­ca­tion oper­a­tions. This is an impor­tant first step towards indus­tri­al­iza­tion of the Smoltek Hydro­gen cell material. 

The Pro­to­type Coater will be used to val­i­date that we have cho­sen the right con­cept for the future vol­ume man­u­fac­tur­ing, and also make it pos­si­ble to devel­op indus­tri­al growth recipes before fur­ther scale-up. And even more impor­tant – it pro­vides sam­ples of indus­tri­al tech­nol­o­gy already now, when cus­tomers are to use our new mate­r­i­al in the devel­op­ment of their next gen­er­a­tion of PEM electrolyzers. 

Shafiq Kabir, Head of Vol­ume Process­es at Smoltek Hydrogen

After suc­cess­ful val­i­da­tion of the Pro­to­type Coater, Smoltek Hydro­gen aims to order a Pilot Coater which is a small­er ver­sion of a final high-vol­ume tool. This is 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. 

Smoltek Hydro­gen plans to scale up the man­u­fac­tur­ing in sync with cus­tomers’ prod­uct devel­op­ment process­es, to ensure cus­tomers can obtain appro­pri­ate sizes and quan­ti­ties of sam­ples as well as final prod­ucts when needed. 

Sh2 Cell Material Roadmap 2023 11
The roadmap for scal­ing up pro­duc­tion of Smoltek Elec­trolyz­er Cell Mate­r­i­al is per­formed in sev­er­al phas­es. The design of a Pro­to­type Coater is an impor­tant first step in the vol­ume con­cept validation.

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.

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