In recent decades, fuel cell technology has been undergoing revolutionary developments, with fundamental progress being the replacement of electrolyte solutions with polymer electrolytes, making the device more compact in size and higher in power density. Nowadays, acidic polymer electrolytes, typically Nafion, are widely used. Despite great success, fuel cells based on acidic polyelectrolyte still depend heavily on noble metal catalysts, predominantly platinum (Pt), thus increasing the cost and hampering the widespread application of fuel cells. Here, we report a type of polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEFC) employing a hydroxide ionconductive polymer, quaternary ammonium polysulphone, as alkaline electrolyte and nonprecious metals, chromium-decorated nickel and silver, as the catalyst for the negative and positive electrodes, respectively. In addition to the development of a high-performance alkaline polymer electrolyte particularly suitable for fuel cells, key progress has been achieved in catalyst tailoring: The surface electronic structure of nickel has been tuned to suppress selectively the surface oxidative passivation with retained activity toward hydrogen oxidation. This report of a H2-O2 PEFC completely free from noble metal catalysts in both the positive and negative electrodes represents an important advancement in the research and development of fuel cells.nonprecious metals ͉ hydrogen oxidation ͉ oxygen reduction F uel cells have been recognized as an alternative powergeneration technique for the future in both mobile and stationary uses (1, 2). After decades of evolution, fuel cells of various types have been developed (2), such as alkaline fuel cell (AFC), phosphoric acid fuel cell (PAFC), molten carbonate fuel cell (MCFC), solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC), and polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEFC). Among them, PEFC has been the most developed one in the past 2 decades (3), featuring rapid startup and high power density particularly suitable for vehicle applications (1-3).Compared with the aqueous electrolytes traditionally used in low-temperature fuel cells, polymer electrolytes completely eliminate the problems caused by electrolyte leakage and can effectively separate the fuels (such as hydrogen) and the oxidant (oxygen) with a thin film of a few tens of microns in thickness. For decades, the commonly used polymer electrolytes have been limited to proton exchange membranes, typically Nafion . Nowadays, many Nafion-based fuel cell systems of different sizes are being demonstrated or tested on a variety of applications across the world. Although they are promising, the Nafion-based fuel cells still face a number of obstacles to commercialization, one of which has been the severe dependence of catalysts on platinum (Pt), an expensive and scarce resource in the earth. Such dependence stems from the strong acidic nature of the protonexchange membrane; and thermodynamically, only noble metals can be relatively stable in this corrosive environment. Despite tremendous efforts devoted to the search for non-...

Although the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) has made great progress in recent decades, its commercialization has been hindered by a number of factors, among which is the total dependence on Pt‐based catalysts. Alkaline polymer electrolyte fuel cells (APEFCs) have been increasingly recognized as a solution to overcome the dependence on noble metal catalysts. In principle, APEFCs combine the advantages of and alkaline fuel cell (AFC) and a PEMFC: there is no need for noble metal catalysts and they are free of carbonate precipitates that would break the waterproofing in the AFC cathode. However, the performance of most alkaline polyelectrolytes can still not fulfill the requirement of fuel cell operations. In the present work, detailed information about the synthesis and physicochemical properties of the quaternary ammonia polysulfone (QAPS), a high‐performance alkaline polymer electrolyte that has been successfully applied in the authors' previous work to demonstrate an APEFC completely free from noble metal catalysts (S. Lu, J. Pan, A. Huang, L. Zhuang, J. Lu, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 2008, 105, 20611), is reported. Monitored by NMR analysis, the synthetic process of QAPS is seen to be simple and efficient. The chemical and thermal stability, as well as the mechanical strength of the synthetic QAPS membrane, are outstanding in comparison to commercial anion‐exchange membranes. The ionic conductivity of QAPS at room temperature is measured to be on the order of 10−2 S cm−1. Such good mechanical and conducting performances can be attributed to the superior microstructure of the polyelectrolyte, which features interconnected ionic channels in tens of nanometers diameter, as revealed by HRTEM observations. The electrochemical behavior at the Pt/QAPS interface reveals the strong alkaline nature of this polyelectrolyte, and the preliminary fuel cell test verifies the feasibility of QAPS for fuel cell applications.

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A series of ether group and amino group cosubstitutent phosphazene copolymers was synthesized and characterized by a combination of NMR, elemental analysis, and FTIR spectroscopy. The length of the alkyl group in the amino side chain and the content of the methoxyethoxyethoxy (MEE) substituent on the polymer properties were varied. Dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) demonstrated that the cosubstitutent polymers prepared have better mechanical properties than the ether homopolyphosphazene, poly[bis(2-methoxyethoxy)ethoxy]phosphazene, MEEP. The copolymers that possessed multiple electron-donor coordination sites, nitrogen and oxygen atoms, were complexed with various amounts of lithium perchlorate (LiClO 4) to form polymer electrolytes. The ionic conductivity of the polymer electrolytes were determined by an impedance analyzer in a temperature range of 30-80 °C. According to those results, the conductivities of the prepared polymer electrolytes increased according to the rise in the MEE side chain contents and reached optima at F ) 0.2-0.25. The best conductivity obtained is 2.2 × 10 -5 S/cm for CPE-3A with F ) 0.25.