Room-Temperature Pulsed Laser Deposition of Boron Nitride for Enhanced Fuel Cell Selectivity.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 41447135.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1021/acsnano.5c17368.
- No licence information is recorded for this record.
- Because redistribution is not established, this page shows the abstract only. Follow the links below for the full text.
Abstract
Hydrogen fuel cells based on proton exchange membrane (PEM) technology are promising as an alternative to fossil fuel-based energy. However, current membrane technology suffers from hydrogen crossover, which represents a significant loss of efficiency. In this work, we demonstrate a scalable, room-temperature coating of ultrathin, polycrystalline boron nitride (BN) via pulsed laser deposition (PLD) that simultaneously increases the conductivity of perfluorosulfonic acid (PFSA)-based membranes while decreasing the crossover, retaining hydrogen on the anode. BN-coated membranes show a 20% increase in beginning of life performance at the operational conditions (1.485 A/cm<sup>2</sup> at 0.6 V) and a 20% increase in power density (0.965 W/cm<sup>2</sup>) while exhibiting a maximum crossover current decrease of 32% (3.58 mA/cm<sup>2</sup>) relative to industry standard Nafion NR-211. The room-temperature direct deposition of ultrathin boron nitride with the PLD method onto a polymer membrane stands as a significant improvement to traditional 2D material transfer-based methods. These observations are practically relevant for the development of PEM technology by enabling more scalable and cost-effective high-performance fuel cell stacks.