The Special Division of Green Life Technology, the National Institute of Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) succeeded in manufacturing a direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) based on the porous glass electrolyte developed by AIST in collaboration with New Glass Forum, New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) and Himeji Institute of Technology (HIT) (press release, January 2003), and in leading to power generation. This demonstrates higher output with the fuel of high methanol concentration in comparison to the conventional fuel cells using perfluorosulfonate membrane, such as "Nafion".

In the DMFC, which is a promising power source for the next generation mobile instruments, the use of methanol fuel with high concentration inevitably causes extensive degradation of performance because of marked methanol crossover in conventional electrolyte membrane of perfluorosulfonate, such as Nafion. This requires to dilute methanol with water more than ten times, forcing the decrease in energy density.

The new technology based on nano-pore glass is expected to raise the output density of the DMFC system and to extend the operational time span of mobile instruments.

A schematic diagram of DMFC based on porous glass electrolyte membrane.

A picture of porous glass electrolyte membrane-electrode assembly.