| Pacific Rim Symposium on Surfaces, Coatings and Interfaces (PacSurf 2016) | |
| Energy Harvesting & Storage | Wednesday Sessions |
| Session EH-WeE |
| Session: | Surfaces & Interfaces for Efficient Power Conversion |
| Presenter: | Matthias Arenz, University of Bern, Switzerland |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
An overview of our work is given which aims at characterizing and developing catalysts for proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). We investigate both model systems as well as applied catalysts, i.e. high surface area catalysts that can be used in industry or industrial samples. In our work, we focus on determining their activity for key electrochemical reactions as well as their electrochemical stability. The measurements are performed in electrochemical half-cells, which allows us to focus on a single electrode under relatively defined conditions as compared to measurements of membrane electrode assemblies (MEAs). Thereby we try to establish general trends and to reveal mechanistic information.
We argue that in many investigations there is still a large gap between the insight gained on model systems and its utilization in applied catalysts. To meet this goal, we strive to improve experimental methods and procedures for characterizing catalyst performance. We introduced for example the method IL-TEM to follow catalyst corrosion in more detail. More recently we started to develop a synthesis platform that allows systematic investigations of industrial type catalysts. We coined this a colloidal tool-box approach. In this presentation we discuss the benefits and limits of our approach to combine basic and applied research.