Branko N. Popov

Carolina Distinguished Professor

Director, Center for Electrochemical Engineering

Currently, Dr. Popov is professor at USC and Director of the Center for Electrochemical Engineering at USC. His research group is comprised of two postdoctoral fellows, eight PhD students, and four BS students. His research interest in the area of power sources focuses on new materials for cathodes and anodes for primary and secondary batteries capacitors and fuel cells and development of performance models for capacitors, fuel cells and to predict capacity fade for lithium ion batteries. For DOE in the last two years a novel process was developed for preparation of thin film membrane assemblies with novel nanostructured Pt-alloy catalysts with Co, Ni and Cr. This effort resulted in development novel method based on pulse electro-deposition technique for preparation of membrane electrode assemblies. Office of Naval Research and American Electroplaters and Surface Finishers Society have funded his research group in last ten years to develop alternative coatings to protect hard alloys from hydrogen embrittlement and to substitute cadmium plating. The research in the area of electrodeposition and corrosion engineering includes the work on underpotential deposition of metals, and deposition of nanostructured multi-layers of non anomalous Fe-Ni, Zn-Ni-P and Zn-Ni-SiO₂ ternary alloys and composites.

His research group is supported by numerous government agencies such as: Department of Energy, Office of Naval Research, US Army Corps of Engineers, Reconnaissance Office (NRO), NASA, Sandia National Laboratory, and the South Carolina Department of Transportation and private industries such as ELISHA, St. Jude Medical, Fuji Film Corporation and Faraday Technologies . In 2003, he was awarded with a major award from DOE to develop novel non precious metal catalyst for fuel cells. The goal of the proposed work is to construct and test membrane electrode assemblies (MEAs) with different non-precious metallic nanoclusters and to demonstrate the potential to perform at least as good as the conventional Pt catalysts currently in use in MEAs.