To develop a high performance direct methanol fuel cell, a novel electrolyte membrane is needed. This electrolyte membrane should be durable up to 130°C to improve the catalytic reaction, and the methanol crossover should be reduced. Our approach was to design a pore-filling-type polyelectrolyte membrane, where the polyelectrolyte is filled into the pores of a porous substrate. This makes an integrated system with a membrane and a catalyst layer. The porous substrate was completely inert to aqueous methanol solution and was durable at high temperature. The substrate matrix could suppress membrane swelling to reduce methanol crossover, and showed mechanical strength at high temperatures. A radical polymerization technique was employed to fabricate the pore-filling membrane. A porous silica sol-gel thin base membrane on a carbon electrode was used as a membrane-electrode integrated system. The substrate pores were filled with a poly͑acrylic acid-co-vinyl sulfonic acid͒ network. The membranes showed high proton conductivity, thermal stability, and low methanol permeation.

No abstract

No abstract

Mono‐ (Cu or Au) and bi‐metallic AuCu nanoparticles were prepared by a modified polyol reduction method and deposited onto Al2O3 followed by calcination at 500 °C in air. The synthesised catalysts were tested for their activity for NO reduction with CO in excess H2O between 50 and 500 °C at a contact time relevant for automotive convertors. The bi‐metallic catalysts showed a significantly higher activity than Cu/Al2O3 and Au/Al2O3, and the latter was inert for the target reaction. In addition, the activity depended greatly on the Au/Cu ratio, which thus demonstrates a synergy effect between these two metals. Operando UV/Vis spectroscopy provided direct evidence for the transformation of initially oxidised CuOx species into metallic Cu0, which is the only active species for NO reduction. Promotion with Au was found to accelerate the reduction of Cu2+/Cu+ to Cu0.

No abstract