Abstract
The study of the electrochemical catalyst conversion of renewable electricity and carbon oxides into chemical fuels attracts a great deal of attention by different researchers. The main role of this process is in mitigating the worldwide energy crisis through a closed technological carbon cycle, where chemical fuels, such as hydrogen, are stored and reconverted to electricity via electrochemical reaction processes in fuel cells. The scientific community focuses its efforts on the development of high-performance polymeric membranes together with nanomaterials with high catalytic activity and stability in order to reduce the platinum group metal applied as a cathode to build stacks of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) to work at low and moderate temperatures. The design of new conductive membranes and nanoparticles (NPs) whose morphology directly affects their catalytic properties is of utmost importance. Nanoparticle morphologies, like cubes, octahedrons, icosahedrons, bipyramids, plates, and polyhedrons, among others, are widely studied for catalysis applications. The recent progress around the high catalytic activity has focused on the stabilizing agents and their potential impact on nanomaterial synthesis to induce changes in the morphology of NPs.
Highlights
The study of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) has received intense attention due to their wide and diverse applications in chemical sensors, electrochemical devices, batteries, supercapacitors, and power generation, which has led to the design of membrane-electrode assemblies (MEAs) that operate in different fuel cell types [1,2,3]
Even when compared to devices such as Redox flow batteries (RFBs), they share practically the same configuration. Both types of devices allow the chemical energy contained in energy vectors obtained from renewable sources to be converted into electricity, PEMFCs have advantages over RFBs, such as the absence of liquid components, there are no toxic components outside the cell, there are no precipitation reactions that limit their energy density, they do not have electrolytes with high ohmic resistance that can present problems of evaporation and instability, nor they present problems of dendritic growth of metals that represent safety problems, in addition to presenting a much greater long-term operating stability [6]
PEMFCs have attracted increasing attention given their advantages for the automotive industry, which has been materialized in their remarkable technical progress
Summary
The study of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) has received intense attention due to their wide and diverse applications in chemical sensors, electrochemical devices, batteries, supercapacitors, and power generation, which has led to the design of membrane-electrode assemblies (MEAs) that operate in different fuel cell types [1,2,3]. Even when compared to devices such as Redox flow batteries (RFBs), they share practically the same configuration Both types of devices allow the chemical energy contained in energy vectors obtained from renewable sources to be converted into electricity, PEMFCs have advantages over RFBs, such as the absence of liquid components (which makes their use in mobile devices practical), there are no toxic components outside the cell (compared to vanadium RFB), there are no precipitation reactions that limit their energy density, they do not have electrolytes with high ohmic resistance (non-aqueous electrolytes) that can present problems of evaporation and instability, nor they present problems of dendritic growth of metals that represent safety problems, in addition to presenting a much greater long-term operating stability [6]. These alternative energy sources provide the possibility of receiving energy from hydrogen and synthetic or bio-synthetic fuel and can operate with greater efficiency and environmental sustainability compared to thermal motors [7,8]. Fuel cells are electrochemical devices used for various technological applications, such as in vehicles, mobile phones, portable electronics, and power generators [9,10,11]
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