Rational Materials and Structure Design for Improving the Performance and Durability of High Temperature Proton...

Hydrogen energy as the next-generation clean energy carrier has attracted the attention of both academic and industrial fields. A key limit in the current stage is the operation temperature of hydrogen fuel cells, which lies in the slow development of high-temperature and high-efficiency proton exchange membranes. Currently, much research effort has been devoted to this field, and very innovative material systems have been developed. The authors think it is the right time to make a short summary of the high-temperature proton exchange membranes (HT-PEMs), the fundamentals, and developments, which can help the researchers to clearly and efficiently gain the key information. In this paper, the development of key materials and optimization strategies, the degradation mechanism and possible solutions, and the most common morphology characterization techniques as well as correlations between morphology and overall properties have been systematically summarized.