Electrochemically controlled energy release from a norbornadiene-based solar thermal fuel: increasing the reversibility to 99.8% using HOPG as the electrode material
Journal article, 2020

Solar energy conversion using molecular photoswitches holds great potential to store energy from sunlight in the form of chemical energy in a process that can be easily implemented in a direct solar energy storage device. In this context, we investigated the electrochemically triggered energy release of a solar thermal fuel based on the norbornadiene (NBD)/quadricyclane (QC) couple by photoelectrochemical IR reflection absorption spectroscopy (PEC-IRRAS). We studied the photo-induced conversion of the energy-lean 2-cyano-3-(3,4-dimethoxyphenyl)-norbornadiene (NBD ') to the energy-rich 2-cyano-3-(3,4-dimethoxyphenyl)-quadricyclane (QC ') and the electrochemically triggered reconversion using highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) as an electrode material. We compared our results with the results obtained previously using Pt(111) electrodes and we characterized the photochemical and electrochemical properties of the storage system. NBD ' can be photochemically converted and electrochemically reconverted with very high selectivity. HOPG largely suppresses the unwanted catalytic reconversion which was observed on Pt(111). We performed repetitive cycling experiments for 1000 cycles to determine the reversibility of the system. Our results show that it is possible to reach reversibility above 99.8% using HOPG as an electrode material.

Author

Fabian Waidhas

University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU)

Martyn Jevric

Chalmers, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Applied Chemistry

Michael Bosch

University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU)

Tian Yang

University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU)

University of Shanghai for Science and Technology

Evanie Franz

University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU)

Zhi Liu

University of Shanghai for Science and Technology

Julien Bachmann

Saint Petersburg State University - Spsu

University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU)

Kasper Moth-Poulsen

Chalmers, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Applied Chemistry

Olaf Brummel

University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU)

Joerg Libuda

University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU)

Journal of Materials Chemistry A

2050-7488 (ISSN) 2050-7496 (eISSN)

Vol. 8 31 15658-15664

Subject Categories

Other Physics Topics

Other Chemistry Topics

Energy Systems

DOI

10.1039/d0ta00377h

More information

Latest update

10/15/2020