Designing New Materials for electrolyzing clean fuel

从风能和太阳能等可再生资源中获得的清洁能源对于建立可持续能源基础设施和避免与气候变化有关的广泛灾难至关重要。在世界范围内，主要的汽车制造商正在开发燃料电池车辆，其将使运输具有零本地温室气体排放，并且最近燃料电池驱动的汽车已经商业化。现在比以往任何时候都更需要可再生氢来推进这一可持续能源基础设施。聚合物电解质膜（PEM）水电解槽可用于从水的分解产生氢气，从而使得能够使用从太阳能、风能和潮汐能到核能的各种可再生能源来产生清洁氢气。虽然电解槽目前在商业上是可获得的，但是该技术还没有利用主要从燃料电池领域积累的知识体系中借用的材料和组装实践进行优化。在这个项目中，我们将通过为材料和界面合成的材料制造过程提供信息，帮助开发下一代PEM电解槽技术。

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.