Non-precious catalysts and porous media for polymer electrolyte fuel cells

Polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEFC) is a clean technology that directly converts hydrogen fuel into electricity and produces only clean water. The widespread deployment of polymer electrolyte fuel cell powered systems is however hindered by the use of costly platinum-based catalysts. The goal of this project is thus to develop substantially cheaper but high performing materials to replace precious platinum based catalysts and other porous media. To that end, carbon foam based materials were found to be promising. To pursue this goal, you will synthesise various carbon foam based materials, characterise them and perform ex-situ and in-situ tests on them including advanced electrochemistry and laser spectroscopy. The central element of the study is to correlate the intrinsic electronic properties of the carbon foam materials (to be obtained using the latest time-resolved ultrafast spectroscopy equipment available in the Lord Porter Laser Laboratory) to the performance indicators of the fuel cell in order to continually refine the proposed materials and eventually realise more efficient PEFCs