{"id":230776,"date":"2026-02-07T05:20:05","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T11:20:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/watching-a-critical-green-energy-catalyst-dissolve-atom-by-atom"},"modified":"2026-02-07T05:20:05","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T11:20:05","slug":"watching-a-critical-green-energy-catalyst-dissolve-atom-by-atom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/watching-a-critical-green-energy-catalyst-dissolve-atom-by-atom","title":{"rendered":"Watching a critical green-energy catalyst dissolve, atom by atom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/watching-a-critical-green-energy-catalyst-dissolve-atom-by-atom2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Iridium oxide is one of the most important\u2014and most problematic\u2014materials in the global push toward clean energy. It is currently the most reliable catalyst used in the conversion of energy to chemicals by electrolysis, a process that uses electricity to split water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen.<\/p>\n<p>But iridium is among the rarest non-radioactive elements in Earth\u2019s crust, and not unlike metal rusting over time, iridium oxide catalysts slowly degrade under the harsh acidic and high-voltage conditions required for electrolyzers (the devices used for electrolysis) to operate.<\/p>\n<p>A new study by researchers at Duke University and the University of Pennsylvania offers an unprecedented view of that degradation process, capturing how iridium oxide nanocrystals restructure and dissolve\u2014atom by atom\u2014during electrolysis. The findings provide critical insight into why today\u2019s best catalysts still fail and how future materials might last longer. The study is <a href=\"https:\/\/pubs.acs.org\/doi\/10.1021\/jacs.5c18363\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Iridium oxide is one of the most important\u2014and most problematic\u2014materials in the global push toward clean energy. It is currently the most reliable catalyst used in the conversion of energy to chemicals by electrolysis, a process that uses electricity to split water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen. But iridium is among the rarest non-radioactive elements [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230776\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}