(Invited) Accelerating Electrochemistry: The Development of Rapid Impedance Methods and High-Throughput Screening of Novel Oxide Electrodes for Fuel Cells and Electrolyzers
Authors: O'Hayre Ryan , Huang Jake , Papac Meagan , Shin Yewon , Kim Youdong , Zakutayev Andriy 
Published: November 2022

As electrochemical technologies rise to ever greater prominence in the global energy landscape, new techniques to accelerate the discovery, design, and characterization of novel electrochemical materials and devices are needed. Motivated by this opportunity, here we present our recent work in the development of novel rapid multi-dimensional impedance characterization using the Distribution of Relaxation Times (DRT) combined with high-throughput impedance-based screening of electrocatalysts for ceramic fuel cells and electrolyzers, both of which offer opportunities to accelerate electrochemical materials research and development.

The DRT has been established as a versatile tool for analysis of electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) data, providing insight into the relevant electrochemical processes of fuel cells, batteries, and other devices without the constraints of an a priori model. Here, we present a method for obtaining the DRT directly from rapid time-domain measurements. This technique provides the DRT on a time-scale that is 1-2 orders of magnitude faster than conventional EIS measurements, and opens new avenues for characterization and analysis that are inaccessible and/or impractical with conventional EIS. We demonstrate how this technique can be used to construct multidimensional DRT maps as a function of variables such as applied bias, temperature, changing gas conditions, or state-of-charge (Figure 1). In addition, the model can be adapted to account for time-varying sample states, enabling meaningful analysis of unstable samples and transient phenomena such as equilibration or degradation processes. Finally, we demonstrate how hardware sampling-rate limitations can be overcome via hybrid frequency- and time-domain measurements to scan a broad range of timescales without sacrificing measurement speed. The capability of this method to resolve the DRT along additional dimensions promises to enhance the interpretability of the DRT and provide new insight to guide materials and device optimization.

We then discuss how rapid impedance characterization and analysis methods can be coupled to combinatorial thin-film synthesis and high-throughput automated characterization to investigate a large family of catalytically-active triple-ionic-electronic conducting oxide perovskite materials based on the Ba(Co,Fe,Zr,Y)O3-δ (BCFZY) compositional system, which show great promise for catalyzing the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) for ceramic fuel cells and electrolyzers (Figure 2). In total, we collected and analyzed more than 2,500 impedance spectra from three combinatorial thin-film electrode libraries, comprising 432 distinct compositions. These libraries were synthesized by pulsed laser deposition and measured at three temperatures under two different gas atmospheres, enabling a new scientific insight into the trends governing electrochemical performance. Our combinatorial experiments demonstrate that Co-rich compositions achieve the lowest overall polarization resistance under both dry air and humid N2, while high Fe content may impede the performance at low-to-intermediate temperatures. Reuslts from the combinatorial experiments are supported by isotope-labled SIMS trace diffusion studies as well as by protonic-ceramic fuel cell and electrolysis cell testing of both symmetric cells and full cells that incorporated select compositions of interest. Hierarchical Bayesian analysis indicates that the performance-limiting process depends on the chemical composition, measurement temperature, and atmospheric humidity. Thus, by combining rapid analysis methods with combinatorial experimentation, we achieve a composition map of the condition-dependent electronic properties of materials in the BCFZY perovskite family for application as air electrodes in protonic ceramic fuel cell and electrolyzers.

Figure 1