Short pulse laser structuring as a scalable process to produce cathodes for large alkaline water electrolyzers

This paper presents a novel scalable electrode fabrication process suitable for large alkaline water electrolysers. Laser structuring technology is applied, and a large-scale development of active Ni-based cathodes is demonstrated. The most active electrode shows an overpotential of 104 mV at a current density of 300 mA cm−2 for the hydrogen evolution reaction at the end of the accelerated durability test protocol. Large 400 × 600 mm2 electrodes have been fabricated for the first time, and the electrodes thus fabricated are compared with state-of-the-art electrodes in an industrial alkaline electrolyzer. Within the test period, the laser-structured Ni electrodes significantly outperformed the comparison electrodes. This impressively high activity is attributed to the existence of Ni oxide adjacent to the metallic Ni reaction sites.