Engineers working at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have pioneered new materials that could improve the performance of fuel cells by up to 50 per cent.
Fuel cells are hotly tipped as a significant, environmentally-friendly fuel source of the future. These new material developments could have particularly high impact in the field of portable electronics.
Focusing on direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs), the team have replaced Nafion – the electrolyte placed between the electrodes – with the new material. As well as being expensive, Nafion was prone to seepage which wastes fuels and lower efficiency.
The new material as assembled by a technique called layer-by-layer assembly.
Commenting on the development, Paula T. Hammond, Bayer Professor of Chemical Engineering and leader of the research team, said: “Our goal is to replace traditional fuel-cell membranes with these cost-effective, highly tuneable and better-performing materials.”
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Date Published: May 16, 2008
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