Holdcroft group

Polymers for Electrochemical Energy

News

Awards

Awarded the Montréal Medal 2024

Steve was awarded the Montréal Medal 2024, congratulations! The Montréal Medal is presented as a mark of distinction and honour

2023-11-22

Members

All the best, Kate!

Having finalized a tremendously successful PhD, Kate’s time in the Lab comes to an end and we bid her farewell!

2023-11-22

Awards

Poster Prize and Travel Award – Jacob

Jake won the most recent poster competition held at SFU Chemistry, congratulations! His poster, titled “Investigating Rates of Product Cross-Over

2023-11-15

Steven Holdcroft

Dr. Steven Holdcroft is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Past-President of the Canadian Society for Chemistry (CSC), a Professor of Chemistry, and former Chair of the Department. He holds a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Electrochemical Materials.

He researches ionic polymers, electrochemistry, and fuel cell technology, and has authored/co-authored 300+ articles. He was the Technical Program Chair of Pacifichem 2010 and Pacifichem 2015. More recently, he was the Group Chair of NSERC’s Evaluation Group 1504 (Chemistry) and served on the Committee for Discovery Research reporting to the Vice President, Research NSERC.

He serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of the journals Chemistry of Materials (ACS) and Energy and Environmental Science (RSC). In 2018, he cofounded Ionomr Innovations Inc., a 25-person SFU spin-out commercializing electrochemical membranes for clean energy applications.

For services to the community, Dr. Holdcroft was awarded the Macromolecular Science and Engineering Division Award of the Chemical Institute of Canada (CIC) and is a recipient of the Canadian Society of Canada RioTinto Alcan Award for contributions to Inorganic chemistry or electrochemical research. In 2018, he received the Outstanding Alumni Award from his alma mater for Academic Achievement.

Research

Hydroxyde Ion-Conductive Polymers

Hydroxide Ion-Conducting Polymers

Hydroxide Ion-Conducting Polymers. The Holdcroft group synthesizes and studies hydroxide ion-conducting polymers for alkaline water electrolysis, fuel cells, and CO2 electrolysis.
We designed a new sub-class of polymers, C2-sterically-protected polybenzimidazoliums and polyimidazoliums, which are exceptionally stable under highly caustic conditions at elevated temperatures: J. Am. Chem. Soc. (2012), ACS Macro. Lett. (2014 & 2016), Angewandte Chemie (2016) & Nature Comm. (2019).

Proton-Conducting Polymers

We are studying the synthesis of novel proton-containing polymers in order to further understand how polymer structure controls polymer morphology and how morphology facilitates ion-transport.
Our work focuses on multi-phenylated, sulfonated polyphenylenes, and a method to prepare highly controlled, reproducible polymers: J. Am. Chem. Soc. (2015), Angewandte Chemie (2017), Macromolecules (2019 & 2020).

Transport Properties

Transport Properties

The study of transport of ions, reactant gases, and water in solid polymer electrolytes is of great interest to us. Examples include correlations of proton and hydroxide ion conductivity as a function of water/ion ratio and as a function of membrane morphology, solid-state electrochemistry of dissolved oxygen at membrane/Pt interfaces, and systematic studies of adsorption and diffusion of water: J.Am.Chem.Soc. (2016), ACS Mater.Lett. (2019), J. Mem.Sci. (2019).

Electrochemical devices

We design, fabricate, and analyze various types of electrochemical devices that utilize solid polymer electrolytes.
These include fuel cells, water electrolyzers, and CO2RR electrolyzers, with a focus on component and interfacial phenomenon, and an emphasis on novel materials based on non-fluorous polymeric membranes: J.Electrochem.Soc. (2020), J. Power Sources Adv. (2020), RSC Adv (2020), J. Mem. Sci., (2019), ACS Applied Energy Materials (2019), ChemElectroChem. (2020).

Up-Scaled Polymer Synthesis

Up-Scaled Polymer Synthesis

In 2016, with four group members, we founded Ionomr Innovations Inc. to scale up and commercialize hydrocarbon solid polymer electrolyte technology.
Today, this company employs more than 25 people, is central to many global research endeavors researching emerging clean energy technologies. Ionomr has received numerous national and international accolades (Coast Capital Venture Prize, 'Ready to Rocket' list, Hong Kong-Canada Venture Prize, Nouryon International Imagine Chemistry Prize, and the International Start Up Energy Transition (SET) Award.
The Holdcroft Group continues to study chemistry underpinning large scale polymer synthesis and membrane fabrication: Energy Environ. Sci. (2016), Macromolecules (2019 & 2020), J. Mem. Sci. (2020).

π-Conjugated Polymers

Our group has a long history researching π-conjugated polymers (πCPs), particularly their structure-function, solid state, chemically-amplified-, soft-, and, thermal-lithography, their photochemistry, and related macromolecular electronics.
We recently investigates the photoelectrochemistry of conjugated polymers, a concept we introduced in the 90’s and which has re-emerged under the topic, “solar fuels”: Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells (2019), Synthetic Metals (2019), & Can. J. Chem., 96 (2018).

CO2 Reduction

Low-temperature polymer electrolyte-based devices that drive the electrochemical reduction of CO2 and CO towards value added products have become a staple in carbon utilization strategies worldwide. The emergence of novel, cheap catalyst materials and innovative cell designs have opened a pathway towards economic viability of these new kinds of electrolyzers which heavily rely on the performance and durability of the deployed polymer electrolytes.

Our established, highly conductive, and robust anion conducting and cation conducting polymers offer a unique materials platform that allows us to tune specific (transport/stability) polymer properties towards the requirements of these new devices. We study the fundamental processes at the electrode-electrolyte interface that determine the balance of reactants in the cathode catalyst layer, and design membrane-electrode-assemblies that enable efficient and stable CO2 electrolysis.

(Mardle, P.; Holdcroft, S; et al., J Phys. Chem. C. 2021, 125.)