A research team led by Piran Kidambi, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Vanderbilt University, has made a breakthrough advance for clean energy. By incorporating an atomically thin layer of graphene, the team has developed a way to improve fuel cell efficiency without sacrificing performance—solving a long-standing challenge in the field.
Their research, “Overcoming the Conductance versus Crossover Trade-off in State-of-the-Art Proton Exchange Fuel-Cell Membranes by Incorporating Atomically Thin Chemical Vapor Deposition Graphene,” was recently published in Nano Letters (ACS Publications).
Fuel cells rely on proton exchange membranes (PEMs) to conduct protons while preventing the unwanted crossover of fuel molecules like hydrogen. Thinner membranes can improve performance by reducing resistance and enabling higher power density. However, this typically comes at a cost: thinner PEMs allow more hydrogen fuel to leak through, reducing overall efficiency.
Kidambi’s team has found a way to break this trade-off.
By incorporating a monolayer of chemical vapor deposition (CVD) graphene—an ultra-thin material just one atom thick—into PEMs, the team significantly reduced hydrogen crossover by more than 50% while maintaining excellent proton conductivity. The graphene layer with pores at the atomic and nanoscale acts like a selective barrier, allowing protons to pass while blocking larger molecules such as hydrogen gas.
“You want protons to go through, but you want hydrogen molecules to be retained,” Kidambi said. “With our approach, there’s no performance loss compared to conventional membranes, but you still get a significant reduction in fuel leakage. That’s a big deal in this field.”
Beyond improving current fuel cell designs, the technology has the potential to accelerate the transition to a hydrogen-based economy, particularly for heavy-duty transport sectors such as trucks, ships, and trains, where electrification remains challenging.
“There are many exciting applications,” Kidambi added. “Hydrogen infrastructure is currently a bottleneck. But imagine producing hydrogen from agriculture or industrial waste, purifying it using membranes like ours, and using it in high-efficiency fuel cells to decarbonize transport and energy systems.”
The project brought together a multidisciplinary team from Vanderbilt’s School of Engineering, the Vanderbilt Institute of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, the University of Calgary, and Western University in Canada.
Contact: Lucas Johnson, lucas.l.johnson@vanderbilt.edu