Title: New Design of 1D Nanostructure Electrodes for Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells
Speaker: Prof. Shangfeng Du  (University of Birmingham, UK)
Time: 9:00am.-10:00am., Oct. 24th, 2019
Venue: Room 105, Shaw Engineering Building, Wushan Campus
[Abstract]
The advances of materials synthesis and nanotechnology have brought in tremendous progress to the development of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs), in particular on understanding catalytic mechanisms of fuel cell reactions on catalyst surfaces. Many new catalyst approaches and concepts have been reported. However, there are still big challenges to make the developed novel nanostructures into practical electrodes for fuel cell devices. At Birmingham, we recently demonstrated a new approach to prepared catalyst electrodes from aligned ultrathin nanowires. This approach combines in-situ growth with single crystal nanowires to fabricate nanostructured thin film catalyst electrodes. Catalyst layers are produced with a monolayer array of nanowires at a thickness less than half micrometre. Such thin catalyst layers with the open structure are considered advantageous to minimize internal resistance and mass transport limitations leading to high power performance. The removal of carbon support, for which the corrosion has been considered as a big challenge in fuel cell operation, further improves the durability. This talk will discuss the lessons we learnt from the surface modification in the fabrication of the electrodes and its potential for other electrochemical energy conversion systems.
Announced by School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering