Accelerating water dissociation in bipolar membranes and for electrocatalysis

Catalyzing water dissociation (WD) into protons and hydroxide ions is important both for fabricating bipolar membranes (BPMs) that can couple different pH environments into a single electrochemical device and for accelerating electrocatalytic reactions that consume protons in neutral to alkaline media. We designed a BPM electrolyzer to quantitatively measure WD kinetics and show that, for metal nanoparticles, WD activity correlates with alkaline hydrogen evolution reaction activity. By combining metal -oxide WD catalysts that are efficient near the acidic proton -exchange layer with those efficient near the alkaline hydroxide-exchange layer, we demonstrate a BPM driving WD with overpotentials of