直接甲醇燃料电池(DMFC)由于其能量密度高，燃料便宜易得等优点，非常有潜力应用于移动电子设备和应急备用电源等领域。电催化层的质子电导率的大小和分布直接影响到DMFC的性能，而这方面的研究仍然很不充分。本项目将在催化层中引入多种形状（棒，圆锥等）的Nafion纳米阵列，因为不同的形状可以产生不同的质子电导率的大小和分布，而阵列结构可具有足够的长度（达数十微米），可有效的把电极内部的质子传递到出来。还将在纳米阵列中添加磁性纳米粒子，以便采用磁场精确调节这些纳米阵列的排列，而且磁性纳米粒子在去除之后还可以调节Nafion纳米阵列的孔隙度和分布。还采用荧光显微技术表征催化层内部的工作过程，尤其是电子和质子导通状态。在此基础之上建立相关的数学模型，帮助我们优化磁性Nafion纳米阵列的形状等实验参数，大幅提高DMFC的性能。此技术还可拓展应用到氢氧燃料电池，电解水等领域。

Direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) is a very promising power source for portable electronic devices and uninterrupted power supply due to its advantages of high power density, cheap fuel price, easy operation etc. The strength and distribution of proton conductivity in the catalyst layer of DMFC can directly and strongly affect the performance of DMFC, while the microscale research of this field is quite insufficient. In this proposal, we introduce a Nafion nano-array with variant shapes as the proton conductor in catalyst layer, because the variant shapes can benefit the strength and distribution of proton conductivity. The Nafion nano-array has many advantages, such as higher proton conductivity, enough length (up to tens micrometer), which can facilitate the proton transfer. The magnetic nanoparticles, such as Fe3O4, will be added into the Nafion nano-array, and makes the nano-array be modulatable by magnetic field. Furthermore, the porosity and distribution of Nafion nano-array also can be modulated by the dissolution of magnetic nanoparticles. In addition, the fluorecence microscopy will be used to reveal the working process of the thin catalyst layer, especially revreal the proton and electron transfer. Based on the work above, some related mathematic model will be built to optimize the experiment parameters, such as the shape and dimension of Nafion nano-array. This technique can be extended to some other fields, such as H2/O2 fuel cell and water electrolysis, which use proton exchange membrane as their function part.