Researchers have made a water-splitting catalyst that stayed active for nearly 3,500 hours in an accelerated ageing test. Their nickel-based material uses oxygen atoms in its own crystal structure to help produce oxygen, a route that can improve the reaction but often causes the catalyst to break down. The study appeared September 22 in Nature Sustainability.
At the oxygen-producing electrode, the starting material combines chromium oxide and nickel selenide. Applying voltage removes selenium first and chromium later. The remaining nickel oxyhydroxide has localized electronic states that, the researchers say, let oxygen in its crystal participate in the reaction without the widespread changes that damage the material.
In an anion-exchange-membrane electrolyser, the catalyst delivered a current density of 4.1 amperes per square centimetre at 1.8 volts in a potassium-hydroxide solution at 80 °C. The separate, nearly 3,500-hour accelerated ageing run was at 60 °C; it does not establish the same endurance at 4.1 amperes per square centimetre and 80 °C.
How long the catalyst lasts in a full-scale hydrogen plant, and what it would cost there, remain open.
Sources
- Yu et al., “Sequential electronic reconstruction enables durable oxygen redox in water electrolysis,” Nature Sustainability (September 22, 2026)
- Illustrative photograph: CambridgeBayWeather, Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. The pictured electrolyser is not the device tested in the study.
