FoundMat
WP5: Developing materials for sustainable solid oxide electrolyzer cells
In the project FoundMat, Montanuniversitaet Leoben and Materials Center Leoben Forschung GmbH are working together on the discovery of new materials for solid oxide electrolyzer cells with reduced content of critical materials, using a funnel-based optimization scheme to balance resources and costs with material innovations.
(2026) This project is funded under the scope of the COMET program within the K2 Center “Integrated Computational Material, Process and Product Engineering (IC-MPPE)” (Project No 886385). This program is supported by the Austrian Federal Ministries for Economy, Energy and Tourism (BMWET) and for Innovation, Mobility and Infrastructure (BMIMI), represented by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG), and the federal states of Styria, Upper Austria and Tyrol.
Project Title
- Foundations for integrated materials intelligence and accelerated materials innovations (FoundMat)
- Work package 5: Developing materials for sustainable solid oxide electrolyzer cells
Duration
- 01.02.2026 - 31.01.2030
Partners
- Montanuniversitaet Leoben, Chair of Physical Chemistry (Project Partner)
- Materials Center Leoben Forschung GmbH (Consortium Leader)
Funding / Call
- COMET Centres, competence centers for excellent technologies
Contact
Assoz.Prof. DI Dr. Edith Bucher
Chair of Physical Chemistry
Montanuniversitaet Leoben
Email: edith.bucher(at)unileoben.ac.at
Dr. Daniel Scheiber
Computational Materials Design
Materials Center Leoben Research GmbH (MCL)
Email: Daniel.Scheiber(at)mcl.at
Solid oxide electrolyzer cells (SOECs) are key to the energy sector of the future due to their unmatched efficiencies in hydrogen production. Due to the immense demand for green hydrogen and the parallel strong political support provided by the EU’s Green Deal, significant market growth is expected, particularly in Europe. However, current material systems for air electrodes are heavily based on cobalt and rare earth elements (REE), which are considered critical raw materials by the EU and thereby a limiting factor for implementation. Replacement of REE and Co in air electrode materials is a major focus of current research, but conventional approaches lead only to incremental progress.
For the fast development of new material systems, the investigation of broad design spaces for potential systems must be combined with the characterization of properties in application-relevant environments. This may be implemented through a funnel-based optimization scheme to balance resources and costs with material innovations. Applied to the case of SOEC material systems, this approach may be implemented by a preselection of possible systems depending on the criticality of the involved elements, high throughput screening using first-principles predictions for to evaluate phase stability, bulk synthesis of selected material systems combined with a basic characterization, and ultimately a cell-integrated assessment. By combining the expertise on SOECs at MUL with the materials design approaches at MCL, a significant speed-up in combination with an increased coverage of the design space is expected.