Electrocatalysis and Fuel Cells

Electrocatalysis if of large industrial importance, especially in the field of sustainable energy conversion. In our group we studied in the past few years a number of different catalysts with respect to fundamental aspects of the oxygen reduction reduction, but also for the hydrogen evolution reaction and the formic acid oxidation reaction. One major field of application concerns the preparation of improved catalysts for fuel cells for automotive applications. Here the focus in our research lies in catalyst preparation and characterisation. This work is mainly associated with two projects funded by the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking: the FP7 project "CathCat" (2013-2015) that was coordinated by us, and the H2020 project "INSPIRE" (2016-2019). In addition, we collaborate with the Physics of Energy conversion and storage group of Prof. A. Bandarenka on local activity measurements with the electrochemical scanning tunneling microscope.