Lucía Morales

Alumni

Driven by the necessity to mitigate anthropogenic climate change, the goal of many scientists is set on developing sustainable technologies that can deliver cleaner energies, shifting completely the existent dependency on fossil fuels. Proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC) show to be a promising renewable energy to achieve this transition, and thus, my motivation to collaborate with the topic.

Due to the nature of PEMFC, its improvement and further market implementation greatly depends on the collaboration of vast interdisciplinary research of materials, FC fundamentals ending with applied science. Thus, my master thesis will focus on analyzing the performance of the ORR reaction when changing the Pt carbon support (non-porous and porous) of the catalyst layers (CL). By using a GDE setup, these CLs can be tested over the range of relevant FC potentials and current densities, hence, bridging the gap between fundamental and applied research of PEMFC.