Abstract：
Reference electrode is the foundation of electrochemical study; thus, most electrode materials are tested in a three-electrode mode to acquire potential-dependent kinetics. However, it is difficult to directly use conventional reference electrodes to detect potential information in solid electrolyte devices due to their compact assembly structure. Therefore, the kinetic study of an electrochemical device faces challenges in precise identification of specific problems originating from the anode or cathode. Here, focusing on proton exchange membrane water electrolysis, we design a solid electrolyte reversible hydrogen electrode (SE-RHE), which can be used for electrode diagnosis under various operating conditions. Compared to the reference electrodes reported in the literature, which are mainly based on liquid electrolyte, the SE-RHE is highly sensitive and compatible, as well as easy to assemble. The potential deviation is less than ±0.5 mV, and the cell voltage derived from the electrode potential well reproduces the value that was directly measured with a deviation less than 0.2%. The reference electrode developed in this work enables the kinetic study of a specific electrode rather than the entire cell. For instance, an interesting observation is that the cathode shows distinct stability under stable and fluctuating operations. Differing from the high stability under stable operation, the cathode degrades significantly under fluctuating operations.
摘要：
参比电极是电化学研究的基础,因此,大多数电极材料在三电极模式下进行测试，以获得电位依赖性动力学。然而,传统的参比电极由于其紧凑的组装结构，很难直接使用它们来检测固体电解质器件中的电位信息。因此,电化学装置的动力学研究在精确识别源自阳极或阴极的特定问题方面面临挑战。这里,专注于质子交换膜水电解，我们设计了一种固体电解质可逆氢电极（SE-RHE），可用于各种操作条件下的电极诊断。与文献中报道的参比电极相比，主要基于液体电解质，SE-RHE是高度敏感和兼容的，以及易于组装。电位偏差小于±0.5mV,并且从电极电位阱导出的电池电压再现了直接测量的值，偏差小于0.2％。在这项工作中开发的参比电极能够对特定电极而不是整个电池进行动力学研究。例如,一个有趣的观察是，阴极在稳定和波动的操作下显示出明显的稳定性。不同于稳定运行下的高稳定性，阴极在波动操作下显著退化。
