Impact analysis of particle sphericity on the properties of porous materials via particle packing method for hydrogen fuel and electrolysis cells

This study focuses on the impacts of particle's sphericity on the properties of porous materials crucial to electrochemical devices. Three-dimensional structures with spherical and cylindrical particles were generated to simulate porous granular and fibrous materials. The constructed particle geometries are as follows: a sphere and cylinders with different aspect ratios (height-to-diameter) of 0.1, 0.5, 1.0, 2.5, 5.0, 10, and 20. Every model exhibits a porosity of 0.500 ± 0.001 to exclude the effects of porosity. The structures were binarized with 200×200×200 dimensionless voxels, which were analyzed with the specific surface area, grain and pore size distributions, geometrical tortuosity, conductivity, and diffusivity across the through- and in-planes. As a result, the particle geometry significantly impacts on tortuosity, conductivity, and diffusivity, with the absolute value of Spearman's correlation coefficient of up to 1. It may imply the necessity to consider particle geometry as an ex-situ characterization for better electrochemical performance.