Case studies
Green hydrogen is a carbon-free fuel created by using renewable electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. This process is essential for decarbonising heavy industries like shipping and steel manufacturing, where battery tech is not a viable solution. A critical bottleneck is the Oxygen Evolution Reaction (OER), the slow and energy-intensive step required to release oxygen. Increasing this reaction rate is key to making green hydrogen production more financially viable and efficient.
The groups of Professor Frank de Groot (Debye Institute for Nanomaterials Science, Utrecht) and Professor Christoph Baeumer (MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology, University of Twente) utilised Silson’s Pt-coated, 100 nm thick, 2.5 mm square SiN membranes to investigate La₂CoMnO₆ perovskite thin-film electrocatalysts. By providing an X-ray transparent window, Silson’s membranes enabled the team to probe the oxygen reaction dynamics from the backside of the membrane in-situ, yielding important information that will inform future OER catalyst development.
The article was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society and can be read in full here.
