The Elec­tro Cat­a­lyst Sup­port is the first patent of a new patent fam­i­ly regard­ing how to use Smoltek’s core tech­nol­o­gy in elec­tro­chem­i­cal cells. In this case – how we can use the tech­nol­o­gy to rad­i­cal­ly decrease the amount of irid­i­um cat­a­lyst load in PEM water elec­trolyz­er cells as well as increase the out­put per area of the cell.

With this new patent fam­i­ly Smoltek expands its IP port­fo­lio to include the field of green hydro­gen pro­duc­tion. This is a break­through for us as we now can be a key sup­pli­er of tech­ni­cal solu­tions that enable the hydro­gen indus­try to scale up the pro­duc­tion of PEM electrolyzers.

Fabi­an Wenger, Head of R&D at Smoltek Hydrogen

The Elec­tro Cat­a­lyst Sup­port patent fam­i­ly is cov­er­ing an elec­trolyz­er and a method for pro­duc­ing a cat­a­lyst sup­port­ed on a nanos­truc­ture. The inno­va­tion relates to devices used in elec­trol­y­sis, par­tic­u­lar­ly for the elec­trol­y­sis of water, a way of pro­duc­ing hydro­gen gas with­out fos­sil fuels. It pro­vides means of con­vert­ing excess elec­tri­cal ener­gy from inter­mit­tent ener­gy sources, such as wind and solar pow­er to chem­i­cal ener­gy for stor­age and lat­er use.

The approved claims cov­er an elec­trolyz­er con­tain­ing elon­gat­ed, ver­ti­cal­ly ori­ent­ed nanos­truc­tures used to cre­ate a con­nec­tion between the cat­a­lyst par­ti­cles on the pro­tect­ed nanos­truc­ture and in con­tact with the mem­brane pro­vid­ing con­duct­ing paths for both ions and elec­trons. The tech­nol­o­gy is suit­able for nanos­truc­tures that are at least par­tial­ly cov­ered by a pro­tec­tive lay­er designed to increase resis­tance to cor­ro­sion (i.e. so they are durable for use on the anode side of the PEM electrolyzer).

Smoltek’s patent port­fo­lio now glob­al­ly com­pris­es 80 grant­ed patents. Read more about our IP and patents.