Patterning Polymer Electrolyte Membrane for Fuel Cell and Electrolysis Applications

Patterning polymer electrolyte membrane offers the prospect of enhancing the thermodynamic efficiency for a wide range of electrochemical systems that utilize membrane electrode assemblies (MEAs). In this work, several different polymer electrolyte membrane chemistries (both proton exchange and hydr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:ECS transactions 2017-01, Vol.77 (11), p.1325-1335
Main Authors: Zhang, Le, Porter, Troy, Guillory, Sean, Chi, Cao, Arges, Christopher George
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:Patterning polymer electrolyte membrane offers the prospect of enhancing the thermodynamic efficiency for a wide range of electrochemical systems that utilize membrane electrode assemblies (MEAs). In this work, several different polymer electrolyte membrane chemistries (both proton exchange and hydroxide exchange membranes) were patterned via conventional soft lithography using poly(dimethyl siloxane) (PDMS) molds. The patterned membranes displayed excellent fidelity after dropcasting on the PDMS mold and various structures and feature sizes were generated using the versatile soft lithography approach. This report concludes with preliminary results of patterned membranes for proton exchange and hydroxide exchange membrane fuel cells and proton exchange water electrolysis. These preliminary results convey that mass transfer resistances are more prominent in patterned membranes over non-patterned membranes.
ISSN:1938-5862
1938-6737
1938-6737
1938-5862
DOI:10.1149/07711.1325ecst