Welcome to the Amira-Avizo Software Use Case Gallery

The hot pressing process for fabricating membrane electrode assemblies (MEAs) has been widely adopted, yet little is known of its effects on the microstructural properties of the different components of the MEA. In particular, the interaction of the electrolyte, electrode and gas diffusion layer (GDL) due to lamination is difficult to probe as conventional imaging techniques cannot access the internal structure of the MEA. Here, a novel approach is used, which combines characterisation of hot... Read more

This work describes the performance improvement of a polymer electrolyte fuel cell with a novel class of microporous layers (MPLs) that incorporates hydrophilic additives: one with 30 μm aluminosilicate fibers and another with multiwalled carbon nanotubes with a domain size of 5 μm. Higher current densities at low potentials were observed for cells with the additive-containing MPLs compared to a baseline cell with a conventional MPL, which correlate with improvements in water management. Th... Read more

4D imaging – the three-dimensional distributions of chemical species determined using multi-energy X-ray tomography – of cathode catalyst layers of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEM-FC) has been measured by scanning transmission x-ray microscopy (STXM) spectro-tomography at the C 1s and F 1s edges. In order to monitor the effects of radiation damage on the composition and 3D structure of the perfluorosulfonic acid (PFSA) ionomer, the same volume was measu... Read more

With the growing use of X-ray computed tomography (X-ray CT) datasets for modelling of transport properties, comes the need to define the representative elementary volume (REV) if considering three dimensions or the representative elementary area (REA) if considering two dimensions. The resolution used for imaging must be suited to the features of interest in the sample and the region-of-interest must be sufficiently large to capture key information. Polymer electrolyte fuel cells have a hier... Read more

The porous transport layer (PTL) is a vital component of the polymer electrolyte membrane water electrolyser (PEMWE) as it is both a conduit for current distribution and mass transport. This study aims to examine the influence of the microstructure of the PTL on the performance of a PEMWE by the combination of ex-situ and in-situ techniques. Two PTLs with distinctly different mean pore diameter were characterized to determine key properties such as surface morphology, porosity, pore size dist... Read more

Fuel cells are electrochemical devices that convert the chemical energy of fuels into electrical energy. An ideal option for a wide variety of portable, stationary, and automotive applications is using the polymer electrolyte
fuel cells due to their modular design, high efficiency, and environmental benefits.

A 3D microstructure of the non-woven gas diffusion layers (GDLs) of polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEFCs) is reconstructed using a stochastic method. For a commercial GDL, ... Read more

The most common means of fabricating membrane electrode assemblies (MEAs) for polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEFCs) involves a hot-press step. The conditions used to perform the hot-press impacts the performance and durability of the fuel cell.

However, the hot-press process is not essential for achieving operational MEAs and some practitioners dispense with the hot-press stage altogether by using a self-assembled approach. By performing the integration of the components in-situ durin... Read more

Proton conductivity of the polymer electrolyte membranes in fuel cells dictates their performance and requires sufficient water management. Here, we report a simple, scalable method to produce well-dispersed transition metal carbide nanoparticles. We demonstrate that these, when added as an additive to the proton exchange Nafion membrane, provide significant enhancement in power density and durability over 100 hours, surpassing both the baseline Nafion and platinum-containing recast Nafion ... Read more