Researchers develop a phosphorus-containing polymer that can be made into high-temperature fuel-powered 26650 battery

A collaborative research team including Los Alamos National Laboratory, the University of Stuttgart (Germany), the University of New Mexico, and Sandia National Laboratories has developed a fuel cell proton conductor based on polystyrene phosphonic acid that maintains proton conductivity up to 200 degrees Celsius in the absence of water. They described the material's progress in a paper published this week in Nature Materials.

Hydrogen produced from renewable, nuclear or fossil fuels can help decarbonize industry and provide environmental, energy resilience and flexibility in multiple sectors of the economy through carbon capture, utilization and storage. To this end, fuel cells are a promising technology that converts hydrogen into electricity through an electrochemical process, emitting only water.

"While commercialization of efficient fuel cell electric vehicles has successfully begun, the next generation of fuel cell platforms for heavy-duty applications will require further technological innovation," said Yu Seung Kim, project leader at Los Alamos. "One of the current technical challenges of fuel cells is the heat dissipation of the exothermic electrochemical reaction of the fuel cell.

"We have been working to improve the performance of high-temperature membrane fuel cells since we developed the ion-pair coordination membrane in 2016," said Kim. "Ion-pair polymers are good for membrane use, but when we use them as electrode binders, high levels of phosphoric acid doping can lead to electrode poisoning and acid leaching."

In current fuel cells, heat dissipation requirements are met by operating the fuel cell at high cell voltages. To achieve efficient fuel cell engines, the operating temperature of the fuel cell stack must be raised to at least the engine coolant temperature (100 degrees Celsius).

We thought that phosphorus-containing polymers would be a good alternative, but previous materials could not achieve this due to the undesirable generation of anhydrides at the operating temperatures of the fuel cell. So we focused on preparing phosphorus-containing polymers that do not generate anhydrides. Kerres' research group at the University of Stuttgart was able to prepare such a material by introducing fluorine into the polymer. "It is exciting that we now have both a membrane binder and an ionomer binder for high-temperature fuel cells," said Kim. ”

Ten years ago, Atanasov and Kerres developed a new synthetic method for phosphorus-containing poly(pentafluorostyrene) that included the following steps: (i) polymerizing pentafluorostyrene by free radical emulsion polymerization; and (ii) phosphorylating the polymer by nucleophilic phosphination. Surprisingly, this polymer exhibited good proton conductivity, higher than that of Nafion in the temperature range >100°C, and unexpectedly excellent chemical and thermal stability in the temperature range >300°C.

Atanasov and Kerres and Kim of Los Alamos shared their research results, and Kim's team developed high-temperature fuel cells for phosphorus-containing polymers. With the integration of membrane electrode assemblies with LANL's ion-pair coordination membranes (Lee et al., Nature Energy, 16120, 2016), fuel cells using phosphorus-containing polymers showed excellent power density (stability >500h at 160°C under H2/O2 conditions) of 1.13Wcm-2.

What's next? "Achieving a power density of 1Wcm-2 is an important milestone that tells us that this technology may be successfully commercialized. Currently, the technology is being commercialized through the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office within the Department of Energy's ARPA-E and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE).

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