A Scanning Flow Cell System for Fully Automated Screening of Electrocatalyst Materials

Electrocatalysts play an important role in sustainable energy-related fields. As these catalysts still require improvement on activity and stability, a lot of effort is invested in developing new materials. Due to the enormous parameter space spanned by material composition and experimental conditions, there is a great demand for high-throughput screening of the material performance. To address this issue, a scanning flow cell (SFC) has been developed and is utilized for catalyst research for the first time. The adaptation of a homemade LabVIEW program to the SFC setup enables fully automated, computer-controlled high-throughput measurements. A gas purging system is introduced to saturate the electrolyte with gases in a timeframe comparable to typical rotating disk electrode (RDE) systems. To demonstrate the capabilities of the setup, the oxygen reduction reaction on polycrystalline platinum is investigated as a sample system. The cyclic voltammograms are consistent with those expected from investigations in conventional electrochemical cells. Repetitive measurements show high reproducibility. Considering the potential of the system toward improvements and extensions, the SFC will be a valuable screening tool for electrocatalyst research.