MXene-based materials for proton-exchange membrane fuel cell applications

Proton-exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) are promising technologies for efficient and clean energy production. However, there are several challenges that impede their commercialization on a larger scale, such as the cost, durability, water management, and catalyst performance. In recent years, MXene-based materials have attracted attention for their promising application in PEMFCs and their unique properties, such as conductivity, chemical stability, easily tunable structure, and large surface area. This comprehensive review explores the recent advancements of MXene-based materials in addressing the key challenges in PEMFC operation. The application of MXene-based materials as catalyst supports, gas diffusion layer additives, membrane modifications, bipolar plate coatings, and electrode modified structures is thoroughly reviewed in this work. The effect of MXene incorporation on power density, efficiency, and durability is presented. Additionally, challenges and future directions for MXene-based materials in PEMFCs are identified. This work showed that further understanding of MXene behavior in fuel cell environments is still required. It has been shown that additional efforts are still required toward the utilization of MXene-based materials for PEMFCs, and cost-effective approaches should be developed. This paper concludes that the integration of MXene-based materials appears to be promising to enhance PEMFCs' performance and to achieve sustainable and clean energy production.