Development of an Electrolysis-Reversible Hydrogen Electrode (E-RHE)

Reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE) has been utilized widely as one of the reference electrodes. Even though the RHE is not actually used in the experiments, the electrode potential data are often referred to the RHE. To operate RHE, hydrogen gas supply from hydrogen cylinder or hydrogen pipeline is required and much care is strictly required not to leak hydrogen gas to the atmosphere. We proposed a new electrolyser-reversible hydrogen electrode (E-RHE). In this electrode small electrodes are included, one of which works as a cathode and evolves hydrogen gas. Thus evolved hydrogen gas goes up to another electrode which performs the reversible hydrogen electrode. The condition which gives the best performance of E-RHE has been investigated. From these results, the E-RHE was found to take part in the electrochemical experiments as the reference hydrogen electrode.