Designing New Materials for electrolyzing clean fuel

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Clean energy harvested from renewable resources, such as the wind and sun, is vital for establishing a sustainable energy infrastructure and averting widespread catastrophes related to climate change. Worldwide, major automotive manufacturers are developing fuel cell vehicles that will enable transportation with zero-local greenhouse gas emissions, and recently fuel cell powered cars have become commercialized. Now more than ever, renewably sourced hydrogen is needed to advance this sustainable energy infrastructure. Polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) water electrolzyers can be used to produce hydrogen from the decomposition of water, thereby enabling the use of a variety of renewable energy sources from solar, wind, and tidal to nuclear energy to produce clean hydrogen. While electrolyzers are currently commercially available, the technology has not yet been optimized with materials and assembly practices largely borrowed from the body of knowledge accrued in the fuel cell field. In this project, we will help develop the next generation of PEM electrolyzer technologies by informing the materials manufacturing processes for material and interface synthesis.