Porous composite electrodes cell

Gas-diffusion electrode (GDE) is a porous composite electrode developed for fuel cell technology, usually composed of Teflon bonded catalyst particles and carbon black. GDEs have been ap-... 

Tanner, C. W., Fung, K.-Z., and Virkar, A. V. (1997). The effect of porous composite electrode structure on solid oxide fuel cell performance. 1. Theoretical analysis. J Electrochem. Soc 144 21-30. 

Polymer-electrolyte fuel cells (PEFC and DMFC) possess a exceptionally diverse range of applications, since they exhibit high thermodynamic efficiency, low emission levels, relative ease of implementation into existing infrastructures and variability in system size and layout. Their key components are a proton-conducting polymer-electrolyte membrane (PEM) and two composite electrodes backed up by electronically conducting porous transport layers and flow fields, as shown schematically in Fig. 1(a). 

Lagergren, C. Simonsson, D. The effects of oxidant gas composition on the polarization of porous LiCo02 electrodes for the molten carbonate fuel cell. J. Electrochem. Soc. 1997, 144 (11), 3813-3817. 

Furthermore, porous CPs (e.g., polypyrrole, polyanUine) films have been used as host matrices for polyelectrolyte capsules developed from composite material, which can combine electric conductivity of the polymer with controlled permeability of polyelectrolyte shell to form controllable micro- and nanocontainers. A recent example was reported by D.G. Schchukin and his co-workers [21]. They introduced a novel application of polyelectrolyte microcapsules as microcontainers with a electrochemically reversible flux of redox-active materials into and out of the capsule volume. Incorporation of the capsules inside a polypyrrole (PPy) film resulted in a new composite electrode. This electrode combined the electrocatalytic and conducting properties of the PPy with the storage and release properties of the capsules, and if loaded with electrochemical fuels, this film possessed electrochemically controlled switching between open and closed states of the capsule shell. This approach could also be of practical interest for chemically rechargeable batteries or fuel cells operating on an absolutely new concept. However, in this case, PPy was just utilized as support for the polyelectrolyte microcapsules. 

The cathode consists of lithiated nickel oxide. Nickel oxide is a p-type semiconductor, having a rather low conductivity. When doped with lithium oxide, its conductivity increases tens of times, owing to a partial change of Ni + to Ni + ions. The lithiation is accomplished by treating the porous nickel electrode with a lithium hydroxide solution in the presence of air oxygen. The compound produced has a composition given as Lij +Nii j( Nijj +0. This lithiation of nickel oxide was first applied in 1960 by Bacon in his alkaline fuel cell. 

There is more to catalyst layer operation than electrocatalysis, a lot more The design of fuel cell electrodes with high performance, long lifetime, and low cost is about embedding the catalyst, usually the most expensive and least stable material in the cell, into a porous composite host medium. It turns out that material selection and structural design of the host medium is as important as that of the catalyst material itself. 

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