Abstract
Proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) represent a promising technology for clean energy conversion. The key chemical transformation within a fuel cell is conducted by catalyst nanoparticles tethered to a carbon support. Although the carbon support plays a critical role in maximizing the performance and durability of the catalyst nanoparticles and mass transport, predictably tuning the chemical environment and pore architecture of the carbon support remains a challenge. Metal–organic frameworks are a class of crystalline porous coordination polymers known for their structural and chemical tunability. Recently, metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), almost exclusively zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8), have been used as precursors to generate carbon supports where the MOF architecture serves as a template to generate the carbon skeleton. As a result, these materials have an improved homogeneous porous landscape and, encouragingly, superior PEMFCs performance and durability. Herein, we leverage the vast library of MOFs and report design principles for generating precisely tuned carbon support architectures through systematic changes to the structure and chemical composition of MOFs. Advanced fuel cell testing of PEMFCs featuring these novel carbon architectures offers fine level insight into the effects of pore size, connectivity and chemistry on the performance of PEMFCs.Acknowledgement: This research was supported by the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office (HFTO), Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, US Department of Energy (DOE) through the Million Mile Fuel Cell Truck (M2FCT) consortium, technology managers G. Kleen and D. Papageorgopoulos.
Published Version
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