Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR)

DLR-DAAD Doctoral Fellowship Nr. 664: Critical raw materials-free/lean and durable electrocatalysts and electrodes for proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC)

Stuttgart

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Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR)

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Aufgaben: Advance fuel cell technologies for heavy-duty transport, focusing on material development for PEMFC with exceptional stability and performance.
Arbeitgeber: Collaborate with leading experts in a cutting-edge research environment focused on sustainable energy solutions.
Mitarbeitervorteile: Opportunity to publish results, present at conferences, and engage in project acquisition.
Warum dieser Job: Engage in high-impact research that addresses global challenges in energy sustainability and decarbonization.
Gewünschte Qualifikationen: Master's degree in relevant fields, experience in nanomaterials, electrochemistry, and analytical techniques required.
Andere Informationen: Opportunities for collaboration and student supervision are available.

Your mission is to help pave the way for fuel cell technologies needed to decarbonize heavy-duty transport. Your goal is to advance the community in the development of materials for PEMFC aiming for exceptional stability, performance, and substantial reduction of use of critical raw materials. Achieving these goals is crucial to overcome current hurdles that hinder large scale market penetration of PEMFC.

For this purpose, you will use flame spray pyrolysis (FSP) techniques, which represent one-step and scalable production methods for nanomaterials synthesis. These techniques enable access to a broad range of nanomaterials including Pt-C structures, complex oxides, alloys, and meta-stable materials. FSP facilitates a high degree of scalability due to continues synthesis process and the possibility of direct deposition of the produced electrocatalysts as films due to one step production nature of the process. In the frame of your work, you will identify nanomaterials classes of interest for in-depth R&D to overcome the aforementioned hurdles. You will synthetize electrocatalysts by identifying and optimizing FSPcompatible precursor chemistry to accelerate the development of novel materials. You will improve their electrochemical properties by optimizing the process parameters to qualify them for further processing into catalyst solutions for electrode fabrication.

Moreover, you will establish a reliable and reproducible method for the fabrication of electrode layers for PEMFC utilizing the developed electrocatalysts. Here, the focus is on the influence of the materials (catalyst, catalyst support, ionomer) and resulting solutions on electrochemical properties of the electrode layers. The technical relevance will be demonstrated at membrane electrode assemblies level using single cell and short stack setups under relevant operation

conditions. Performance and durability limitations will be analysed by electrochemical analysis techniques (I-V, EIS, CV, LSV, etc.) and sophisticated ex-situ and in-situ methods including FIB-SEM, EDX, XRD, XPS, AFM, NAP-XPS, etc. The achieved results are aimed to be published in renowned peer-review journals and presented at conferences. You will have the opportunity to be active in project acquisition and to supervise students.

Additionally, you will have opportunities to collaborate with other team members on suitable projects and to work with experts from other electrochemical energy conversion technologies, including high temperature fuel cells and membrane water electrolyzers.

Please apply here: DLR-DAAD Research Fellowship Programme – DAAD – Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (https://www2.daad.de/deutschland/stipendium/datenbank/en/21148-scholarship-database/?status=&origin=&subjectGrps=&daad=&intention=&q=dlr&page=1&detail=50019749)

Further information and current vacancies: DLR Current offers – DAAD (https://www.daad.de/en/studying-in-germany/scholarships/daad-funding-programmes/dlr/current-offers/)

University Master degree in Chemistry, Material Science, Physics, Engineering sciences, Chemical Engineering or similar with very good grades experience in at least one of the following topics and willingness to learn the others: synthesis and characterization of nanomaterials, electrochemistry, characterization of electrochemical energy converters very good written and spoken English language (e.g. IELTS score ≥ 7) advantageous Skills: Experience in ex-situ analytical techniques such as SEM, AFM, XPS etc. experience in half-cell measurements for electrochemical reactions experience in programming for real world applications (Python, MATLAB, etc.) and using AI/ML tools experience in experimental design, execution and data evaluation experience in preparation of membrane-electrode assemblies strong communication skills and superior scientific writing ability to work independently, but willingness to perform in a team German language skills of high value English competence: See requirements on www.daad.de/dlr (https://www.daad.de/dlr)

Payment

According to the DAAD remuneration guidelines