Optimized tantalum interlayer thickness for PTLs: Enhancing PEMWE performance, stability, and reducing precious metal loading
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Proton exchange membrane water electrolyzers (PEMWEs) are clean for green hydrogen production. However, their widespread adoption is hindered by high production costs and durability challenges. The low-rate, high-overpotential oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in the anode requires a robust electrode composed of a porous transport layer (PTL) and an active catalyst. Titanium (Ti)-based PTLs are widely used in PEMWEs due to their excellent corrosion resistance. However, the formation of a non-conductive Ti oxide layer increases interfacial contact resistance (ICR) and degrades performance. While precious metal coatings can address this issue, their high cost limits large-scale application. This study investigates the influence of tantalum (Ta) interlayer thickness on PTL performance to reduce precious metal loading while maintaining conductivity. Polarization curves reveal that a 320 nm Ta interlayer with 50 nm platinum achieves 33 % higher current density at 2.0 V compared to a commercial PTL with 200 nm platinum, requiring four times less precious metal. In-situ durability tests at 2.0 V and 80 °C demonstrate stable current density without degradation. Surface morphology and ICR characterization confirm the electrochemical integrity of the PTLs. These findings highlight that optimized Ta interlayers offer a cost-effective solution for improving the efficiency and stability of PEMWEs.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".