Recent advances of metal-organic frameworks-based proton exchange membranes in fuel cell applications

In recent years, proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell (FC; PEMFC) has been widely studied and gradually applied to vehicle power supply, portable supply, communication base station backup, emergency power supply, and so on. Especially in new energy vehicles, PEMFC has absolute advantages and a broad market. PEM, which is the core component of PEMFC, has a close correlation between its property and the performance of FC. Therefore, developing excellent PEMs is the focus of researchers. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) composed of metal ions/clusters and organic ligands have attracted extensive attention in the field of proton conduction. The hybrid membranes formed by MOFs and polymers show excellent performances and design concepts, which have great prospects in commercial application. This paper summarizes the research progress of MOFs-based hybrid membranes as PEMs applied in hydrogen-oxygen FCs and direct methanol FCs, in which the different polymers used as substrates are also summed up.