Boosting Electrode Performance and Bubble Management via Direct Laser Interference Patterning

• DOI: 10.1021/acsami.4c20441
• Publication Date: 2025-01-30T18:00:06Z
• Authors: Hannes Rox; Fabian Ränke; Jonathan Mädler; Mateusz M. Marzec; Krystian Sokołowski; Robert Baumann; Homa Hamedi; Xuegeng Yang; Gerd Mutschke; Leon Urbas; Andrés Fabián Las...; Kerstin Eckert
• Keywords: Boosting

Laser-structuring techniques like Direct Laser Interference Patterning show great potential for optimizing electrodes water electrolysis. Therefore, a systematic experimental study is performed to analyze the influence of spatial period and aspect ratio between structure depth on electrode performance pure Ni electrodes. Using statistical design experiments approach, it found that distance laser-structures decisive processing parameter improvement performance. Thus, electrochemically active surface area could be increased by factor 12 compared nonstructured electrode. For oxygen evolution reaction, significantly lower onset overpotential (≈ −164 mV at 100 mA cm–2) found. This explained superhydrophilic structured bubble growth, which leads number nucleation sites and, simultaneously, larger detached bubbles. Combined with fully wetted surface, this results in reduced blocking thus, ohmic resistance.