Together towards 0.1 mg iridium/​cm2

The Elec­tro­chem­ic­al Soci­ety, the lead­ing pro­fes­sion­al organ­isa­tion in elec­tro­chem­ic­al and sol­id-state sci­ence and tech­no­logy, rarely place their con­fer­ence out­side the Amer­icas. And when they returned to Europe for the first time since 2009, they chose to meet in a city where sus­tain­ab­il­ity of such events is a top pri­or­ity: Gothen­burg, Sweden – the most sus­tain­able city in the world*.

The 244th ECS was also the per­fect event for us, right on time when our next step is to expand the range of poten­tial cus­tom­ers. And as a first-time con­trib­ut­or and exhib­it­or at the Elec­tro­chem­ic­al Society’s annu­al meet­ing we cer­tainly made an impact, as our booth had a steady stream of curi­ous vis­it­ors. We were busy explain­ing the bene­fits of the mater­i­al, the tech­no­logy behind it and our hand-in-hand approach to poten­tial cus­tom­ers. The mes­sage was that we are now ready to engage in product devel­op­ment pro­jects with elec­tro­lyz­er companies.

On site at Svenska Mäs­san in Gothen­burg
The 244th ECS meet­ing was held at the Swedish Exhib­i­tion & Con­gress Centre, wel­com­ing over 3,400 attendees from all over the world. We had since long planned to use this oppor­tun­ity as the start­ing point of the mar­ket intro­duc­tion of our elec­tro­lyz­er cell mater­i­al (ECM) for PEM elec­tro­lyz­ers, since already now cus­tom­ers need to start work­ing with us to be able to apply our solu­tion in the next gen­er­a­tion elec­tro­lyz­ers they are plan­ning for.

On Sunday Octo­ber 8, Bas­tien Pen­ninckx gave a con­fer­ence present­a­tion to an audi­ence of experts work­ing on redu­cing the need of iridi­um-based cata­lyst in PEM elec­tro­lyz­ers. He intro­duced the product, the com­pany, what we have already accom­plished, our next steps and how we plan to man­u­fac­ture our ECM in high volumes. After many inter­est­ing ques­tions from the audi­ence dur­ing the Q&A, the dis­cus­sions on our solu­tion and roadmap con­tin­ued in our exhib­i­tion booth, wit­ness­ing a steady flow of industry and research rep­res­ent­at­ives in our booth and keep­ing us busy. Sev­er­al of the industry’s key play­ers expressed a ser­i­ous com­mer­cial interest and joint next steps were discussed.

Green Hood­ie alert!
In our booth we had pre­pared well. We had a huge back­drop, that was an eye catch­er as well as it gave an over­view of what we are doing. A tv-screen where we showed present­a­tion slides and a short loop­ing film from our in-house H2LAB. We also had small phys­ic­al samples of our cell mater­i­al and a sum­mar­iz­ing leaf­let to hand out. 

But most import­antly, we had our R&D and busi­ness people on site, and we were easy to spot – in our very green hoodies! 

Our out­fit was proven to be a hit as all the curi­ous attendees just had to grab hold of someone in green and start ask­ing about our new mater­i­al. The ques­tions were ran­ging from: “How do you make the nano­struc­tures?” to “How big can you make the cell mater­i­al sheet?”. And “How long/​short can you make the nan­ofibers?”, “Can the tech­no­logy be made for bat­ter­ies?” … they were never-ending. 

But mainly the attendees asked about our cell mater­i­al solu­tion for elec­tro­lyz­ers in general.

In the booth we could talk about how to work with us, and our roadmap for the cell mater­i­al. The choice for the cus­tom­ers is free, do they want to work in their lab or in our lab? They decide. Also, we could offer them to be their devel­op­ment part­ner. And on site we had some samples to offer, and we invited some to vis­it our inhouse-lab.

Fabi­an Wenger, Head of R&D

244th ECS Summary

It was a fant­ast­ic coin­cid­ence that ECS 244 – the most import­ant con­fer­ence of the year – happened to take place in our homet­own right when we needed to make the industry aware of how to take the first step towards drastic­ally redu­cing the use of iridi­um. Among the 3,400 vis­it­ors, some were really the spot-on busi­ness and tech­no­logy man­agers from the elec­tro­lyz­er industry, and we made lots of new con­nec­tions. It was a busy week also with meet­ings and lab tours at the office. 

Ellinor Ehrn­berg, President

Our solu­tion for redu­cing iridi­um load­ing on the anode-side and at the same time keep­ing per­form­ance intact was well received as we spoke about the 600-hour elec­tro­lyz­er test res­ult we have made. The effect­ive util­iz­a­tion of iridi­um through half-cell tests at low load­ings were also well taken.

Sank­ar Sasid­har­an, Seni­or Sci­ent­ist Electrochemistry 

It was inter­est­ing to listen to big industry people speak­ing about hydro­gen demand and applic­a­tions, pri­cing of renew­able energy require­ments and scope of hydro­gen gen­er­a­tion in com­ing years.

Shafiq Kabir, Head of Volume Processes

The ses­sions on ALD also were help­ful to under­stand the tech­niques used and pos­sible improve­ments, since we also use it for plat­in­um depos­ition. And also all the oth­er present­a­tions related to hydro­gen elec­tro­lyz­ers , tech­niques and cata­lysts were almost full all the time under­lined the import­ance of top­ic we are deal­ing with.

Xin Wen, Seni­or Sci­ent­ist Nanotechnology 

The meet­ing made it easy to have a num­ber of face to face meet­ings with sup­pli­ers we are work­ing with. It is import­ant to get to know the people behind the screen, now when we have so many ini­ti­at­ives going on.

Reka Simon-Bal­int, Qual­ity & Pro­ject Manager

So, by Thursday Octo­ber 12 when the con­fer­ence ended, a great num­ber of the attendees at the 244th ECS had got­ten know­ledge of Smol­tek Hydro­gen and that we can make just as much hydro­gen as using a com­mer­cial cata­lyst tech­no­logy – but with way less iridium.

* Gothen­burg, the most sus­tain­able city in the world.