A perspective on development of fuel cell materials: Electrodes and electrolyte

Abstract

Summary The declining reserves and environmental concerns related to the use of fossil fuels have made the global think tanks to pursue for the technologies considered to be renewable as well as sustainable. Fuel cell technology is emerging and a green way to produce electricity, provided sufficient amount of hydrogen (fuel) is available that directly convert chemical energy to electrical energy. Despite of being an efficient and eco‐friendly source of energy, commercialization of fuel cells is still difficult to attain. Techno‐economic challenges like high manufacturing and assembly costs, water management, system size, nondurability, and instability of the system need to be addressed. In order to resolve these issues, considerable research has been carried out for the development of novel and inexpensive materials for the fuel cells. In this article, we have reviewed the development of electrodes and electrolyte materials for different types of fuel cells. A detailed description of applications, challenges, and improvement of electrodes/electrolytes materials of different types of fuel cells (polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells, direct methanol fuel cells and solid oxide fuel cells) have been reported in this review article. A brief review of the development of materials for electrode of molten carbonate fuel cells has also been presented in the review.

Rationalizing Structural Hierarchy in the Design of Fuel Cell Electrode and Electrolyte Materials Derived from Metal-Organic Frameworks

“…Furthermore, because of the unique and diverse crystal structures of MOFs, it is extremely hard to directly process them for direct use in fuel cells [87]. A practical solution to this problem is to combine MOFs with materials of a polymeric nature and their advancement as composite membranes [85,88].…”

Electrocatalytic Properties of Mixed-Oxide-Containing Composite-Supported Platinum for Polymer Electrolyte Membrane (PEM) Fuel Cells

“…Opinions are divided on whether the availability of Pt is a bottleneck for the automotive industry and in clean energy technologies [ 3 , 17 ], but it is clear that the widespread use of PEM fuel cells is currently strongly influenced by its price. It has been calculated that electrodes account for nearly half of the cost [ 2 , 18 , 19 ], while the catalyst itself accounts for about 40% of the total cost [ 17 ]. Extensive research is underway worldwide to develop less expensive PEM fuel cells and/or increase the lifetime of PEM fuel cells, an important area of which is catalyst development [ 17 ].…”

Enhancing anion conduction stability of quaternized poly(phenylene) oxide‐based anion exchange membranes with ionic liquids modified carbon nanomaterials

“…The fuel cell technology as a promising and feasible strategy can convert the chemical energy in fuels into electricity without complex combustion processes. 1,2 Among various fuel cells, the anion exchange membrane fuel cell (AEMFC) was considered to possess the merits of fast oxygen reduction kinetics, low fuel permeability, minimized corrosion problems in alkaline solution, less dependent on noble metal catalysts relative to proton exchange membrane fuel cell, etc. 3 The highperformance AEMFC desired the anion exchange membrane (AEM) with high conductivity, fine durability, enough stiffness, etc.…”