Functionalized and Electrospun Polymeric Materials as High-Performance Membranes for Direct Methanol Fuel Cell: A Review

Proton exchange membranes (PEM) for a direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) have main drawbacks which are methanol permeability, reduced proton conductivity and the cost of the membrane. This paper reviews different polymeric materials such as fluorinated, non-fluorinated, acid-base complex, and composite membranes for DMFC. Currently, nonfluorinated membranes gain a lot of attention due to their low cost. Many researchers have developed functionalization methods for non-fluorinated polymer electrolyte membranes for DMFC application to reduce the methanol crossover. Finally, this review presents the Electrospinning technique and its parameter for fabrication of PEM with functionalized polymeric materials by using electrospinning to solve the proton conductivity and methanol permeability problem. The last part of the paper describes the current studies and future direction of PEM for DMFC.