In context of the pollution free green energy generation, proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) are the promising way out for future energy requirement. In recent days, PEMFCs are the most commonly applied fuel cell. The low to moderately high operating temperature, high power density, flexibility and easy scale-up, makes PEMFCs a promising candidate as the next generation power sources for transportation, stationary, and portable applications. Although being extensively used in several important fields, the goal of world-wide commercialization of PEM fuel cells has not yet reached. The main barriers to commercialization are mainly cost and durability. The primary reason of a fuel cell cost is due to the membrane electrode assembly (MEA) that consists of a costly catalyst (usually Platinum (Pt)-based) layers and membrane electrolyte (generally Nafion). Polybenzimidazole (PBI), having unique properties like high thermal stability, excellent mechanical stability, high glass transition temperature etc., is extensively studied for the application in high temperature (>100oC) polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (HT-PEMFC). Despite all these excellent properties, PBI has not gained that much commercialization value due to its very poor solubility in various solvents like N,N-dimethylacetamide (DMAc), N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP) etc., and poor membrane fabrication process. In this work, we have focused on an easy, cost effective, affordable and convenient route of PBI membrane and its composite membrane fabrication for enhanced fuel cell performance. The drawbacks of dissolving PBI polymer, mentioned above have been overcome by using Methane Sulfonic Acid as solvent. For enhancement in acid doping level, proton conductivity and overall fuel cell performances and other properties, different types of inorganic fillers (reduced graphene oxide (rGO), phosphosilicate nano network (PPSN)) have been incorporated. For, rGO-PBI nanocomposite membranes, 0.743 Wcm-2 peak power density and 0.126 Scm-1 proton conductivity was achieved by rGO-PBI-1 at 170oC. For PPSN-PBI nanocomposite membranes, 0.726 Wcm-2 peak power density and 0.116 Scm-1 proton conductivity is achieved with PPSN-PBI-10 at 170oC.
