Authors : Elena S Davydova, Dario R Dekel
Recent developments in hydroxide conducting anion exchange membranes have contributed to the growing interest in alkaline anion exchange membrane fuel cells (AEMFC) which has the potential to be the next fuel cell generation as in principle this technology allows to replace platinum-based catalysts for affordable metal catalysts. Until now, there are a few research studies describing initial development of hydrogen fueled AEMFC [1], and practically no work done on completely platinum group metal (PGM)-free catalysts for AEMFC. Though some progress was made in the development of low cost electrocatalysts for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) in base media [2], much less attention was paid to the electrocatalysis for hydrogen oxidation reaction (HOR) in alkaline solutions. Attempts to move away from the use of PGMs results in prohibitively large voltage losses on the anode in the base media (Fig. 1).
This work provides an extensive literature review on both theoretical and experimental advances in HOR electrocatalysts for AEMFCs. In addition, this work provides new insights into new Ni-based electrocatalysts for the HOR in alkaline medium that are being developed in our group at the Technion, including RDE, XRD, XPS, TPD/TPR/TPO, SEM results and some aspects of DFT calculations.
