In October 2021, Adrian Mularczyk started his postdoc as part of the Membrane Materials and Processes Group (MMP) in the Department of Chemical Engineering & Chemistry (CE&C) of the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). After obtaining his bachelor’s and master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from ETH Zurich he carried out his PhD research at the Paul Scherrer Institute until 2021. During this time, he was researching water transport mechanisms in polymer electrolyte fuel cells using X-ray tomographic microscopy. Specifically, he investigated the complex interactions between the liquid phase and the gas diffusion layer (a porous substrate used to transport reactants to and from the catalyst layer) on a micrometer scale to better understand limitations and challenges of materials currently used in fuel cells.
Having secured funding from the EuroTechPostdoc2 program for his research proposal titled “Synthesis of porous electrodes with bimodal pore size distribution to address transport limitations in next generation electrochemical reactors” he will dedicate the next two years to the research and synthesis of novel porous structures with bimodal pore size distributions. The aim is to generate tailor made structures, capable to address mass transport requirements of electrochemical reactors which are often complex and can involve multiple phases. Due to spatial restrictions in the micrometer range and coupled with the demanding material constraints presented by electrochemical systems, optimization of these mass transport media is not trivial but holds the potential to improve and find application in a broad range of systems.