完全不使用贵金属催化剂的聚合物电解质燃料电池

近几十年,燃料电池技术经历了革命式发展,其中一个根本性改变是使用聚合物电解质代替电解质溶液,这使得电池尺寸变得更小而功率密度变得更大。目前,酸性聚合物电解质被广泛使用。尽管已取得很大成功,但基于酸性聚合物电解质的燃料电池严重依赖于贵金属催化剂（主要是金属铂）,这增加了成本,因而限制了燃料电池的广泛应用。本研究组设计出一种新型的聚合物电解质燃料电池,该电池使用氢氧根离子传导性聚合物——季铵化聚砜作为碱性聚合物电解质,采用镍和银分别作为阳极和阴极催化剂。在获得适合燃料电池应用的高性能碱性聚合电解质的基础上,通过对镍表面的电子结构进行可控调变,使其反应选择性大大提高,既保持了氢氧化催化活性又选择性地抑制了表面氧化钝化。

Alkaline Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells Completely Free from Noble Metal Catalysts

In recent decades, fuel cell technology has been undergoing revolutionary developments, with fundamental progress being the replacement of electrolyte solutions with polymer electrolytes, making the device more compact in size and higher in power density. Nowadays, acidic polymer electrolytes, typically Nafion, are widely used. Despite great success, fuel cells based on acidic polyelectrolyte still depend heavily on noble metal catalysts, predominantly platinum(Pt), thus increasing the cost and hampering the widespread application of fuel cells. Here, we report a type of polymer electrolyte fuel cells(PEFC)employing a hydroxide ion-conductive polymer, quaternary ammonium polysulphone, as alkaline electrolyte and nonprecious metals, chromium-decorated nickel and silver, as the catalyst for the negative and positive electrodes, respectively. In addition to the development of a high-performance alkaline polymer electrolyte particularly suitable for fuel cells, key progress has been achieved in catalyst tailoring: The surface electronic structure of nickel has been tuned to suppress selectively the surface oxidative passivation with retained activity toward hydrogen oxidation. This report of a H_2-O_2 PEFC completely free from noble metal catalysts in both the positive and negative electrodes represents an important advancement in the research and development of fuel cells.