A NIMS research team has developed an approach capable of accurately and rapidly predicting the degradation behavior of electrocatalysts used in water electrolyzers by employing data assimilation—a method commonly employed in weather forecasting.

After analyzing only 300 hours of experimental data, this approach accurately predicted the degradation of an electrocatalytic material occurring after approximately 900 hours of water electrolysis. This approach is able to accelerate and simplify the comparison of degradation properties among various electrocatalytic materials, potentially facilitating investigations into their degradation mechanisms and expediting the development of more efficient, economical and durable electrocatalytic materials.

The work is published in the journal ACS Energy Letters.