Structure and Nature of Liquid Systems for Critical Electrochemical Deposition

The importance of iron and steel production to a thriving economy cannot be understated. And yet, the iron and steel industry accounts for around 7% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and 11% of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. It therefore evident that to reach goals greenhouse gas emissions reductions, we must drastically reduce industrial emissions from the iron and steel industry. One approach is to harness selective utilization of electronics in electrochemical processes for efficient iron electrodeposition with tunable structure and composition. The relative rates of all competing processes are inherently linked to the activities of iron complexes in solution. Our work explores the atomic- and molecular-level strategies to influence electrochemical Fe deposition from acidic aqueous systems or molten salts. For instance, co-salt electrolyte design suppresses the hydrogen evolution (HER) that, balanced against Fe deposition rate, leads to significant improvements in Fe plating efficiency. This work was supported as part of the Center for Steel Electrification by Electrosynthesis (C-STEEL), an Energy Earthshot Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences (BES) and Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR).