Determining the proton transfer mechanism in heteropoly acid mesoporous silica PEMs: Making proton exchange membrane based direct alcohol fuel cells more efficient for real world use

While we don’t actually eat electricity, in a weird kind of way we do. Our current means of producing the energy we need to support the number of people and type of social and economic systems we have built is damaging our ability to continue. Not just from an environmental damage view point, but from the using of a finite resource view point, like a rock star living on a credit card. To begin to solve this energy production problem, many types of renewable devices have been developed, among these are fuel cells. Phosphotungstic acid is a popular compound used for catalysis, which has very high proton conduction activity, making it a prime candidate for part of the fuel cell called the proton exchange membrane. When impregnated into a non-reactive porous material such as mesoporous silica, the water-soluble phosphotungstic acid can be anchored into the matrix, allowing the production of a proton exchange membrane. While these nanocomposites materials have shown promising early results in MT-PEMFCs, the structure-activity relationship of proton exchange in these functional materials is yet to be established. This research is exploring this relationship in order to tailor design proton exchange membranes for further development into functional real world fuel cells. Small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), high resolution-Fourier transform infrared (HR-FTIR) studies have shown that HPA-functionalised mesoporous silica nanocomposites are similar in structure outside of subtle variations in FTIR spectra according to the inherent functional groups in the material. Further studies using neutron scattering including small angle neutron scattering and quasi-elastic neutron scattering are underway to investigate how the proton moves between charged sites in the material are currently underway. Early results suggest that there is a difference in the mechanism when the silica matrix is changed; however the reason for this is still under investigation