Carbon Materials With Interconnected Pores

Background: Opportunities exist for improving interfacial contact between ion-conduction membranes ion-exchange membranes and the electrodes in PEM fuel cell devices. Incorporating mesostructured carbon materials into catalyst supports and hydrogen storage materials has been considered to make improvements in these applications. Mesoporous carbon materials on silica templates have been synthesized previously in powder and fiber morphologies but not in technologically relevant film or monolith morphologies nor with electrical conduction properties. All prior efforts in synthesizing porous carbon films have produced films with poor electrical conductivity and pores that are not generally interconnected. Technology Description: Researchers at the University of California Santa Barbara have developed methods of synthesizing porous or mesoporous carbon films. The novel films possess high surface area highly interconnected pore networks and most notably electrically conductive properties. Additionally a general methodology has been developed for forming porous carbon materials from a variety of different templates with different size pores and in other macroscopic morphologies including monoliths. The porous carbon films can serve functions in electrodes catalyst supports in fuel cells batteries and electrochemical device applications. Applications: 1) Fuel Cells 2) Batteries 3) Electrochemical devices