A paper by Prof. Makoto Uchida and his team at the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Nanomaterials Center has been published in the academic journal ‘ACS Applied Energy Materials’ issued by the American Chemical Society. The graphical abstract of the paper has been selected as the Supplementary Cover Art.

　A paper by Prof. Makoto Uchida and his team at the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Nanomaterials Center has been published in the academic journal ‘ACS Applied Energy Materials’ issued by the American Chemical Society. The graphical abstract of the paper has been selected as the Supplementary Cover Art (T. Hirai et al., ACS Applied Energy Materials 2024, 7 (9), 3806-3823). The title of the paper is “Effects of Humidity and Produced Water on Specific Adsorption of High Oxygen Permeability Ionomers Composed Entirely of Cyclic Monomers on Cathode Performance for Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells”. Important findings on oxygen permeability and catalyst activity improvement were obtained by Mr. Takeshi Hirai, a PhD student and a corporate employee of AGC Inc, and his co-researchers, partially supported by funds for projects from the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO). This was achieved by applying a newly developed high oxygen permeability ionomer, whose primary structure is entirely composed of cyclic monomers, to the catalyst layer in polymer electrolyte fuel cells. This research is expected to dramatically improve fuel cell performance under demanding conditions such as high load and low humidity.