Plenary Speaker
John T. S. Irvine
Professor of Chemistry
University of St Andrews
St Andrews
Fife. KY16 9ST, Scotland, UK
Email: jtsi@st-and.ac.uk
Short Biography
John Irvine FRSE, FRSC has made a unique and world-leading contribution to the science of energy materials, especially fuel cell and energy conversion technologies. This research has ranged from detailed fundamental to strategic and applied science and has had major impact across academia, industry and government. Irvine’s science is highly interdisciplinary extending from Chemistry and Materials through physics, bioenergy, geoscience, engineering, economics and policy.
The quality and impact of Irvine’s research has been recognised by a number of national and international awards, including the Lord Kelvin Medal from the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2018, the Schönbeim gold medal from the European Fuel Cell Forum in 2016, the RSC Sustainable Energy Award in 2015, with earlier RSC recognition via Materials Chemistry, Bacon and Beilby awards/medals.
Irvine has 500 publications and has an WoS h-index of 67. Since 2012 he has published 12 Nature family papers including one on electrochemical switching in Nature in 2016. He has a strong international standing having held senior visiting appointments in the US, Australia and China and has strong links with a number of leading laboratories across the Chinese Academy of Science including being Thousand Talents professor at Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter. He was re-elected European Councillor of the International Society for Solid State Ionics in 2019.
“Tailoring Solid Oxide Fuel Cells for Performance and Application”
The greatest challenge facing Solid oxide cells (SOC), in both fuel and electrolysis cell modes (i.e SOFCs and SOECs) is to deliver high, long-lasting electrocatalytic activity while ensuring cost and time-efficient electrode manufacture. Ultimately, this can best be achieved by growing appropriate nanoarchitectures under operationally relevant conditions, rather than through intricate ex situ procedures.
In our approach, metal particles are grown directly from the oxide support though in situ redox exsolution. We demonstrated that by understanding and manipulating the surface chemistry of an oxide support with adequately designed bulk (non)stoichiometry, one can control the size, distribution and surface coverage of produced particles. We also revealed that the emergent particles are generally epitaxially socketed in the parent perovskite which appears to be the underlying origin of their remarkable stability, including unique resistance of Ni particles to agglomeration and to hydrocarbon coking, whilst retaining catalytic activity
We also present the growth of a finely dispersed array of anchored metal nanoparticles via electrochemical poling on an oxide electrode, yielding a sevenfold increase in fuel cell maximum power density.Both the nanostructures and corresponding electrochemical activity show no degradation over 150 hours of testing. These results not only prove that in operando redox treatments can yield emergent nanomaterials, which in turn deliver exceptional performance, but also provide proof of concept that electrolysis and fuel cells can be unified in a single, high performance, versatile and easily manufacturable device. This opens exciting new possibilities for simple, quasi-instantaneous production of highly active nanostructures for reinvigorating Solid oxide cells during operation.