Novel ceramic composite membranes for low-temperature fuel cells

Abstract A new class of proton-conducting glass ceramic composite membranes was developed for low-temperature fuel cells. According to characterizations, these membranes demonstrated good mechanical, structural, thermal and textural properties. Moreover, they yielded a high proton conductivity of 10 − 2 S cm − 1 at room temperature. An electrode consisting of a heteropolyacid dispersed in a catalyst layer was also prepared and characterized, and the cell performances when using the composite membranes of PWA/PMA doped with either ZrO 2 or TiO 2 glass together with the heteropoly acid electrode were extremely high as compared to counterparts with a phosphosilicate glass electrolyte, at room temperature. The cell evaluation was performed on two ceramic composite membranes, i.e., PWA/PMA–TiO 2 –P 2 O 5 –SiO 2 (1/1/3/5/90 mol %) and PWA/PMA–ZrO 2 –P 2 O 5 –SiO 2 (1/1/3/5/90 mol %), with the same catalyst and with an operation equivalent to that in hydrogen and oxygen fuel cells, and the former membrane was found to present the best properties.