Scanning Electrochemical Microscope System for Nanostructured Electrode Materials in Electrochemical Energy Research

开发具有成本竞争力、高效和环境友好的能源转换和储存技术是一项重大的全球挑战。燃料电池可以通过高效、清洁地将燃料转化为电能来满足这一需求，而电池和超级电容器设备可以为智能电网和交通应用储存能量。然而，这些新技术仍然需要进一步开发，因为它们的储能能力仍然太小，成本太高，而且就燃料电池和电池而言，它们的耐用性仍然需要提高。为了解决直接影响这些技术商业化的材料问题，将开发均匀且结构良好的纳米材料，并将其用于燃料电池、电池和超级电容器系统。这些电化学能量系统的耐用性、性能和容量取决于纳米材料。因此，优化纳米材料的结构，精确控制材料的组成和尺寸，可以极大地提高这些电化学器件的性能。扫描电化学显微镜(SECM)为电化学能量应用提供了一种新的、方便、精确的方法来表征催化剂和电极材料的电化学反应。SECM可以根据局部电流、电导率、表面电位和表面形貌等性质的差异来绘制表面图谱。这种方法能够研究有助于改进燃料电池、电池和超级电容器的能源材料的电化学催化和降解机理。因此，SECM将对我们的电化学能源系统团队以及滑铁卢大学许多工程和科学学科的研究人员非常有用。

The development of cost-competitive, highly efficient, and environmentally benign energy conversion and storage technologies is a major global challenge. Fuel cells can meet this demand by efficiently and cleanly converting fuels to electricity, while batteries and supercapacitor devices can store energy for smart grid and transportation applications. These new technologies, however, still require further development because their capacity to store energy is still too small, their cost too high, and in the case of fuel cells and batteris, their durability still requires improvement. In order to deal with materials issues that directly impact on commercialization of these technologies, uniform and well-structured nanomaterials will be developed and used in fuel cell, battery and supercapacitor system. The durability, performance and capacity of these electrochemical energy systems depend on the nanomaterials. Hence it is important to optimize nanomaterials structure and precise control of composition and size which can drastically improve the performance of these electrochemical devices. Scanning Electrochemical Microscope (SECM) System presents a new, convenient and precise way to characterize the electrochemical reaction of catalysts and electrode materials for electrochemical energy application. SECM could map the surfaces based on differences of such properties as localized current flow, conductivity, surface potentials and surface topography. This method is able to study the electrochemical catalytic and degradation mechanism of the energy materials that are beneficial in improving fuel cells, batteries and supercapacitors. Therefore the SECM will be extremely useful for our electrochemical energy system team as well as to researchers in many engineering and science disciplines at the University of Waterloo.