Ina Reichmann

In order to prevent further increases in the global temperature, fuel cells are one of the key tools to shift our current fossil fuel fuel-based energy market to one dependent on renewable energy. Amongst the different existing fuel cell technologies, the proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC) seem to be the most promising one to achieve this transition. The core of the PEMFCs is membrane electrode assemblies (MEAs), consisting of a proton exchange membrane and two electrodes with their corresponding catalysts embedded in them. Up to this day, expensive and scarce noble metals are used as a catalyst, so the investigation of cheap yet active catalysts is of utmost importance to reduce the overall costs and achieve their market implementation.

The focus of my research will be to unify the advantages of the gas diffusion electrode half-cell (GDE) and of the scanning flow cell (SFC). The combination of these two technologies (GDE-SFC) will allow us to characterize real catalyst layers at relatively large current densities, offering the advantage of coupling the experiments to online analytical measurements, such as the inductive coupled mass spectrometer (ICP-MS).