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H2020Individual fellowship2017–2019

IonPEFC · Advanced catalyst electrodes from Ionic liquid modified PtNi nanowire arrays for PEFCs

Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Duration
2017-08-03 → 2019-08-02
EU contribution
€195,455
Participants
1
Scheme
MSCA-IF-EF-ST

Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.

Results in brief

Advanced catalyst electrodes from Ionic liquid modified PtNi nanowire arrays for PEFCs

The fuel cell is a clean power generator with high energy efficiency and low carbon emission which can play a significant role in helping decarbonize power generation and transport sectors to meet Europe’s energy, environmental and economic challenges. It is estimated that the global fuel cell market could be worth over £16.7 billion in 2020 and over £115.4 billion in 2050. However, to make this clean technology really affordable, there are still major technical barriers to overcome. For polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEFCs), these challenges still lie on the low activity, poor durability and high cost of electrocatalysts in cathodes toward oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). Therefore, IonPEFC proposes to develop, evaluate, and apply a new generation of catalyst electrodes with thin film catalyst nanostructures from PtNi nanowire arrays modified with protic ionic liquids (ILs) for high performance, robust and low cost PEFCs that can meet the targets for commercial applications in power generators and transport.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

Recent developments in PEFC research have seen a significant enhancement of catalyst activities and a reduction of cost at a reduced loading of precious metals by employing novel Pt-based extended surface area nanostructures alloyed with transitional metals, but the low stability caused by the easy dissolution of transitional metals in acidic PEFC environment, and the large difficulty to be integrated into devices due to the unconventional morphology of extended surface area nanostructures as Pt/C nanoparticle catalysts limit them mainly to pure material research, resulting in an increasing gap with real high performance devices. IonPEFC will bring together the chemistry of nanostructure and ionic liquid (IL) synthesis with the engineering of fuel cells to develop PEFC electrodes with thin film catalyst nonstructures from PtNi nanowire arrays modified by protic ILs, targeting an improved understanding of structure-property relationships of electrodes to build high performance and robust PEFC devices. This will involve 4 research objectives:1. To develop electrodes with thin film catalyst nanostructures from PtNi nanowire arrays based on the in-situ growing approach and to study the effect of post acid washing and annealing on the surface properties of PtNi nanowires.2. To synthesize super hydrophobic, electrochemical and thermal stable ILs with high proton conductivity, oxygen solubility and diffusivity. The as-prepared ILs will be used to modify PtNi nanowire electrodes obtained to protect catalyst surface from Ni leaching in fuel cell operation. 3. To test in single cells the as-prepared and IL modified PtNi nanowire electrodes, and compare with conventional Pt/C electrodes.4. To evaluate the long-term durability of the electrodes under real life-context at different European and international automotive driving cycles with the industrial partner.It is expected that substantial performance and durability improvements will result from this research.

Original text from CORDIS.

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Data: CORDIS, © European Union