Titanium-Based, Hierarchical, Flow-through Catalyst for Water Electrolysis Fabricated Via a Combination of Additive Manufacturing and Anodization

This work proposes a metal-based catalyst that can potentially overcome the hurdles towards industrial-scale hydrogen production including: (1) high cost of precious metals, (2) simplicity and scalability of fabrication of catalysts and electrodes, and (3) enabling large-scale, continuous hydrogen production.

A titanium-based catalyst was fabricated via combining 3D printing and in-situ anodization in order to grow highly-ordered TiO₂ nanotubes (NTs) onto a microporous 3D Ti-metal base as current collector. The performance of the reported 3D Ti/TiO₂ electrocatalyst was tested for hydrogen-evolution reaction (HER) via water electrolysis.

The proposed electroatalyst features the following advantages: (1) the fabrication method for the 3D Ti/TiO₂ composite is simple and scalable; (2) the 3D Ti/TiO₂ composite features a flow-through architecture that not only enables more efficient utilization of the surface area of the catalyst but that could enable large-scale, continuous-flow hydrogen-production reactor technologies; and (3) minimization of electrical resistance between active surface area (TiO₂ NTs) and current collector.