Graphene has potential in fuel cells and armour

Graphene, it seems, has great potential as a material for armour, but it isn’t impenetrable, according to two strands of new research. It lets protons pass through; making it a promising material to improve the efficiency of fuel cells.

In paper co-authored by graphene discoverer André Geim, published in the journal Nature, a team at the University on Manchester describes how a sheet of grapheme could act as a perfect membrane in a fuel cell, separating allowing protons to flow inside the cell while electrons form a current in a circuit outside the cell. Current membranes allow hydrogen atoms to leak through in the opposite direction, which reduces the proton flow and thereby cuts the current the cell can generate.

The technique is not simple, though. It’s still largely theoretical, as it depends on being able to make graphene in sufficiently large and clean sheets: something which is currently not possible.