High Performance Anion Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells Enabled by Fluoropoly(olefin) Membranes

Although the peak power density of anion exchange membrane fuel cells (AEMFCs) has been raised from ≈0.1 to ≈1.4 W cm⁻² over the last decade, a majority of AEMFCs reported in the literature have not been demonstrated to achieve consistently high performance and steady-state operation. Poly(olefin)-based AEMs with fluorine substitution on the aromatic comonomer show considerably higher dimensional stability compared to samples that do not contain fluorine. More importantly, fluorinated poly(olefin)-based AEMs exhibit high hydroxide conductivity without excessive hydration due to a new proposed mechanism where the fluorinated dipolar monomer facilitates increased hydroxide dissociation and transport. Using this new generation of AEMs, a stable, high-performance AEMFC is operated for 120 h. When the fuel cell configuration is subjected to a constant current density of 600 mA cm⁻² under H₂/O₂ flow, the cell voltage declines only 11% (from 0.75 to 0.67 V) for the first 20 h during break-in and the cell voltage loss is low (0.2 mV h⁻¹) over the subsequent 100 h of cell testing. The ease of synthesis, potential for low-cost commercialization, and remarkable ex situ properties and in situ performance of fluoropoly(olefin)-based AEM renders this material a benchmark membrane for practical AEMFC applications.