Mária Minichová

PhD Student

Transportation sector is currently a major contributor to greenhouse gas pollution. Therefore, the mobility especially, must undergo a transition to reduce emissions and to slow down climate changes. Electrification of trains using alcohol fuel cells seems to be a viable solution in this transition process mainly due to the safer and milder operation conditions compared to traditional hydrogen fuel cells. However, the optimization of electrocatalyst performance for electrocatalytic oxidation of secondary alcohols is still an ongoing fuel cell research problem. In particular, the effective screening methods for synthesis of new materials and in situ analytical methods are needed for faster and better understanding of this process.

Therefore in my PhD, I will focus on high-throughput synthesis of model electrocatalyst libraries for alcohol fuel cells and the evaluation of the electrocatalysts performance by a scanning flow cell coupled to an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer (online ICP-MS).