Fatemeh Karimi was born in 1984 in Shahreza/ Isfahan, Iran. She received her B.Sc. in pure Chemistry (2006) and M.Sc. in Organic Chemistry (2008) from Isfahan University of Technology, Iran, under the supervision of professor Abdol Reza Hajipour. She is currently working towards her Ph.D. under the supervision of professor Mohammad Ali Zolfigol at Bu-Ali Sina University. Her research interest i...

Degradation of the Nafion electrolyte in Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFCs) limits the lifetime, motivating development of materials that resist degradation. The mechanism for degradation of Nafion under fuel cell conditions remains uncertain. Studies of Nafion degradation in concentrated OH environments, such as Fenton or vapor HOOH tests, show that the main chain significantly degra...

The regenerative H₂/Br₂-HBr fuel cell, utilizing an oxidant solution of Br₂ in aqueous HBr, shows a number of benefits for grid-scale electricity storage. The membrane-electrode assembly, a key component of a fuel cell, contains a proton-conducting membrane, typically based on the perfluorosulfonic acid (PFSA) ionomer. Unfortunately, the high cost of PFSA membranes and their relatively high bro...

The performance and stability of a direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) with membrane electrode assemblies (MEA) using different Nafion contents (30, 50 and 70 wt % or MEA30, MEA50 and MEA70, respectively) and graphitized carbon nanofiber (GNF) supported PtRu catalyst at the anode was investigated by a constant current measurement of 9 days (230 h) in a DMFC and characterization with various techni...

This paper presents the results of mechanical strength of wet and dry zirconia/ Nafion® nano-composite membrane. The tensile tests were conducted to determine elastic modulus and stiffness of dry and wet pristine Nafion® membrane and modified Nafion® membrane. The composite membranes were prepared by recast method of different synthesized zirconium oxide with the zirconia content of 10% by weig...

The introduction of sulfonic acid modified silica in Nafion nanocomposite membranes is a good method of improving the Nafion performance at high temperature and low relative humidity. Sulfonic acid-modified silica is bifunctional, with silica phase expected to offer an improvement in membranes hydration while sulfonic groups enhance proton conductivity. However, as discussed in this paper, this...

the microphase separation of hydrated perfluorinated sulfonic acid membrane nafion was investigated using dissipative particle dynamics (dpd). the nafion as a polymer was modelled by connecting coarse grained beads which corresponds to the hydrophobic backbone of polytetrafluoroethylene and perfluorinated side chains terminated by hydrophilic end particles of sulfonic acid groups [1, 2]. each f...

We have performed a detailed analysis of water clustering and percolation in hydrated Nafion configurations generated by classical molecular dynamics simulations. Our results show that at low hydration levels H(2)O molecules are isolated and a continuous hydrogen-bonded network forms as the hydration level is increased. Our quantitative analysis has established a hydration level (λ) between 5 a...

The interfacial shear strength between Si microwires and a Nafion membrane has been tailored through surface functionalization of the Si. Acidic (-COOH-terminated) or basic (-NH2-terminated) surface-bound functionality was introduced by hydrosilylation reactions to probe the interactions between the functionalized Si microwires and hydrophilic ionically charged sites in the Nafion polymeric sid...