Development of a Novel Niobium-based Porous Transport Layer for Proton Exchange Membrane Water Electrolyser Applications

质子交换膜（PEM）水电解槽被认为是最有前途的技术，以生产高纯度的氢从可再生能源，并已达到商业部署的早期阶段，剩下的挑战包括需要降低生产成本和增加电池的耐用性。多孔传输层（PTL）在电池性能和耐久性中起着重要作用。通常，钛基材料用作PEM水电解槽阳极侧的PTL。 然而，钛很容易在表面形成一层薄薄的氧化物，它会降低导电性。因此，PTL涂覆有大量的贵金属，以确保长期运行的适当性能，这是PEM水电解槽的高资本费用。为了克服这一挑战，应开发具有高耐久性的低成本涂层，以加速该技术的大规模生产。在本项目中，贵金属将被以铱为基础的材料所取代，并将研究不同的处理和掺杂，以选择具有上级性能的最佳涂层。该项目与魁北克和加拿大的氢战略非常一致，将在氢领域创造就业机会和新知识。预期在成功完成拟议研究项目后，将对按比例放大的样本进一步放大经缩减筛选的研究结果。

Proton exchange membrane (PEM) water electrolyser is considered as the most promising technique to produce highly pure hydrogen from renewable energy sources and has reached the early stages of commercial deployment, the remaining challenges include the need to lower the production cost and to increase the cell durability. Porous transport layer (PTL) plays an important role in cell performance and durability. In general, Titanium based material is applied as PTL in the anode side of PEM water electrolyser. However, titanium easily forms a thin layer of oxide on the surface and it will reduce the electrical conductivity. Therefore, PTLs are coated with high amounts of precious metals to ensure proper performance for long-term operation which is the high capital expense of PEM water electrolyser. To overcome this challenge, low-cost coating with high durability should be developed to accelerate the mass production of this technology. In this project, precious metals will be replaced with niobium-based materials and different treatment and doping will be investigated to select the best coating with superior properties. This project is well aligned with Quebec and Canada hydrogen strategy and will create jobs and new knowledge in hydrogen field. It is expected upon the successful completion of the proposed research project, further scale up of the down-selected research results will be carried out for scaled up samples.