2011 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Development of Protonics: applications to proton penetrate membrane and photo catalysts

Research Project

Project/Area Number	21550007
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Section	一般
Research Field	Physical chemistry
Research Institution	The University of Tokyo
Principal Investigator	USHIYAMA Hiroshi 東京大学, 大学院・工学系研究科, 准教授 (40302814)
Project Period (FY)	2009 – 2011
Keywords	理論化学 / プロトン移動 / 燃料電池 / プロトン透過膜
Research Abstract	Proton transfer (PT) is one of the most fundamental and important reactions in chemistry and biology. It has been considered that PT is simple reaction and the reaction mechanism can be understood along the one-dimensional reaction coordinate. However, recent development of experimental and molecular dynamics simulation techniques lead to detailed investigations on PT and show that PT couples strongly with both the other slow skeleton motion and fast electronic motion. In this project, we examined the reaction mechanism of proton transfer reaction in proton penetrate membranes. As the results, it has been clearly shown that strong hydrogen bond network is important for proton transfer rate and proposed a new material with high proton transfer rate by introducing a substituent.