Abstract
The successful development of high-performance, durable platinum group metal-free (PGM-free) electrocatalysts and electrodes for polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) will ultimately improve the cost-competiveness of fuel cells in a wide range of applications. This is considered to be a critical development especially for automotive fuel cell applications in order to bring the system cost of an automotive fuel cell system down to the $30/kW cost target set by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The platinum group metal (PGM) electrocatalysts are a major contributor to the system cost. Addressing the technical challenges to PGM-free electrocatalyst and electrode development, therefore, represents one of DOE's most pressing research and development (R&D) priorities. ElectroCat was formed by the DOE as part of the Energy Materials Network (EMN) in early 2016, and shares with other EMN consortia the goal of decreasing the time to market for advanced materials related to clean energy technologies, in the context of increasing U.S. fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV) manufacturing competitiveness. To accomplish this, the consortium performs core research and development and provides universities and companies streamlined access to the unique, world-class set of tools and expertise relevant to early-stage applied PGM-free catalyst R&D of the member national laboratories. Moreover, ElectroCat fosters a systematic methodology by which prospective catalysts and electrodes are prepared and analyzed rapidly and comprehensively using high-throughput, combinatorial methods. Catalyst discovery is augmented by theory as well as foundational electrocatalysis and materials knowledge at the participating national laboratories. Furthermore, ElectroCat has developed a data sharing framework, requisite of all EMN consortia, for disseminating its findings to the public via a searchable database, to further expedite incorporation of PGM-free electrocatalysts into next-generation fuel cells by advancing the general understanding of the PGM-free electrocatalyst field.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 68-76 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Solid State Ionics |
| Volume | 319 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jun 2018 |
Funding
The authors would like to thank the following researchers whose work is described herein: ANL: Magali Ferrandon, A. Jeremy Kropf, Dali Yang, Nancy Kariuki, and Jaehyung Park; LANL: Hoon Chung, Edward Holby, Siddharth Komini Babu, Ling Lin, Ulises Martinez, Geraldine Purdy, and Xi Yin; ORNL: David Cullen and Brian Sneed; NREL: Huyen Dinh, Luigi Osmieri, Yun Xu, Sadia Kabir, and Andriy Zakutayev. ElectroCat is part of the Energy Materials Network (EMN), under the U.S. Department of Energy's Clean Energy Manufacturing Initiative. This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy ( EERE ) under the Fuel Cell Technologies Office. Research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory performed as part of a user proposal at the Center for Nanophase Materials Science, which is a U.S. DOE Office of Science User Facility. We would also like to thank the staff of Sectors 10 and 12 at Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory. The Advanced Photon Source is a U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences user facility. Argonne is a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science Laboratory operated under Contract No.DE-AC02-06CH11357 by UChicago Argonne, LLC.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| U.S. Department of Energy | |
| Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy | |
| Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office |
Keywords
- Electrodes
- MEA
- Oxygen reduction reaction
- PEMFC
- PGM-free electrocatalysts
