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

聚合物电解质燃料电池（PEFC）是一种将氢燃料直接转化为电能，只产生清洁水的清洁技术。然而，聚合物电解质燃料电池供电系统的广泛部署受到昂贵的铂基催化剂的使用的阻碍。因此，该项目的目标是开发更便宜但高性能的材料，以取代昂贵的铂基催化剂和其他多孔介质。为此，发现基于碳泡沫的材料是有前途的。为了实现这一目标，您将合成各种基于碳泡沫的材料，对其进行预处理并对其进行非原位和原位测试，包括先进的电化学和激光光谱学。这项研究的核心内容是将碳泡沫材料的固有电子特性（将使用波特勋爵激光实验室提供的最新时间分辨超快光谱设备获得）与燃料电池的性能指标相关联，以便不断改进拟议的材料，并最终实现更高效的PEFC

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