Producing hydrogen from electricity currently involves using rare, expensive iridium-based catalysts to split water into oxygen and hydrogen. Using megalibraries – libraries of millions of spatially encoded nanoparticles on one tiny chip – the teams uncovered a new catalyst that matches iridium’s performance at a fraction of the cost.

“For the first time, we were not only able to rapidly screen catalysts, but we saw the best ones performing well in a scaled-up setting,” said Joseph Montoya, senior staff research scientist at TRI and study co-author.

Published in JACS, this study showcases how megalibraries can dramatically reduce the discovery timeline and lay the groundwork for integration with AI to revolutionize materials discovery.

Read the full announcement here.