ABSTRACT
The polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is one of the most promising, clean, and high efciency energy conversion devices. The carbon, due to its unique electrical and structural properties, is one of the key materials in PEMFC. Carbon is used to develop the composite bipolar plate, catalyst support material, microporous layer, and gas diffusion layer (GDL). The different form of carbon materials such as graphite, carbon black, carbon ber, and carbon nanotube has been widely chosen by many researchers for development of PEMFC components. Moreover, the establishment of graphene nanomaterial opened up new avenues to be used in PEMFC components. The graphene being investigated as reinforcement into the composite bipolar plate to improve the electrical conductivity, particularly through plane according to U.S. Department of Energy (U.S. DoE) target properties. The graphene supported platinum catalyst is investigated to develop highly stable and high electrochemical activity in PEMFC environment. Recently, it is reported that the reinforcement of graphene into solid polymer electrolyte increases the PEMFC performance signicantly. It can also be used to develop the microporous layer (MPL) on the electrode surfaces of membrane side for uniform distribution of the fuel and oxidant over catalyst layer. This chapter presents stateof-art use of graphene in PEMFC component along with a description of the different carbon materials currently being
used and their ability to meet the requirements. The chapter discusses composite bipolar plate and electrocatalyst support using graphene along with the possible future usages of graphene in MPL and GDL.
