Nanoscale characterization of crystallinity in DSA® coating

Dimensionally Stable Anodes (DSA®) are used for industrial production of e.g. chlorine and chlorate. It is known that the superior electrocatalytical properties of DSA® is due to the large effective area of the porous coating. However, this knowledge is mainly found from in situ electrochemical measurements. Here, we used ex situ methods, AFM, TEM and gas porosimetry, for characterization at the nanoscale. The DSA® coating was found to consist of mono-crystalline grains with a size of 20–30 nm and with pores of about 10 nm in diameter. Using a simple geometrical model an effective area was calculated. For a typical coating thickness, an increase of about 1000 times in the effective surface area was found, which is consistent with in situ estimations. These results suggest that the dominating source of surface enlargement is due to nano-crystallinity.