High temperature proton exchange nanocomposite membranes based on polybenzimidazoles for fuel cells

The improvement of high temperature (working at 150–200 ° C) proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) is pursued universal in order to solve some of the problems of presentcells based on Nafion membrane (CO tolerance, enhanced kinetics, water management, etc.). Commercially availablepolybenzimidazole (PBI) has been the most widely studied and used for this application in membranes doped with allsorts of strong inorganic acids. Studies have shown that the addition of hygroscopic metal oxide nanoparticles such as SiO2, ZrO2, and TiO2 to PBI can improve the water uptake,proton conductivity, thermal stability and fuel cell performance of PEMFCs prepared based on PBI [1].