Abstract A simple and facile way of modifying commercial membranes for effective fuel cell operation under elevated temperature/low relative humidity conditions has been developed. Instead of using the conventional casting and evaporation method involving the mixed Nafion® ionomer and inorganic fillers, a TiO2/Nafion® composite membrane was fabricated by transferring uniformly constructed porous TiO2 layers from a Si wafer to the Nafion® membrane via spin-coating, followed by a thermal imprinting process. From the process, filler agglomeration was prevented during the solvent evaporation, which secured water retention effect of the hygroscopic TiO2 layers. Furthermore, the prepared TiO2/Nafion® composite membrane was subjected to an additional prism patterning process to provide more proton pathways by enlarging the interfacial surface area between the composite membrane and the catalyst layer, and offset the reduced proton conductivity due to insertion of the inorganic fillers. The modified membrane exhibited highly improved performance compared to the pristine Nafion® 211 membrane under elevated temperature/low humidity conditions.

中文翻译：

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棱镜图案 TiO2 层/Nafion® 复合膜，用于高温/低相对湿度燃料电池操作

摘要 已开发出一种简单易行的方法来改进商用膜，以便在高温/低相对湿度条件下有效地运行燃料电池。与使用混合 Nafion® 离聚物和无机填料的传统浇铸和蒸发方法不同，TiO2/Nafion® 复合膜是通过旋涂将均匀构造的多孔 TiO2 层从 Si 晶片转移到 Nafion® 膜上，然后通过热压印工艺。从这个过程来看，在溶剂蒸发过程中防止了填料团聚，从而保证了吸湿性 TiO2 层的保水效果。此外，制备的 TiO2/Nafion® 复合膜经过额外的棱镜图案化工艺，通过扩大复合膜和催化剂层之间的界面表面积提供更多质子通路，并抵消由于插入无机填料而降低的质子电导率。与原始的 Nafion® 211 膜相比，改性膜在高温/低湿条件下表现出显着改善的性能。