Exploration of the oxygen transport behavior in non-precious metal catalyst-based cathode catalyst layer for proton exchange membrane fuel cells

作     者：Shiqu CHEN Silei XIANG Zehao TAN Huiyuan LI Xiaohui YAN Jiewei YIN Shuiyun SHEN Junliang ZHANG Shiqu CHEN;Silei XIANG;Zehao TAN;Huiyuan LI;Xiaohui YAN;Jiewei YIN;Shuiyun SHEN;Junliang ZHANG

作者机构：Institute of Fuel Cells School of Mechanical EngineeringShanghai Jiao Tong UniversityShanghai 200240China School of Vehicle and MobilityState Key Laboratory of Automotive Safety and EnergyTsinghua UniversityBeijing 100084China 

出 版 物：《Frontiers in Energy》 (能源前沿（英文版）)

年 卷 期：2023年第17卷第1期

页      面：123-133页

核心收录：

学科分类：0808[工学-电气工程] 081705[工学-工业催化] 08[工学] 0817[工学-化学工程与技术] 

基　　金：the National Key R&D Program of China(Grant No.2021YFB4001303) the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant No.21975157) 

主　　题：proton exchange membrane fuel cells(PEMFCs) non-precious metal catalyst(NPMC) cathode catalyst layer(CCL) local and bulk oxygen transport resistance 

摘      要：High cost has undoubtedly become the biggest obstacle to the commercialization of proton exchange membrane fuel cells(PEMFCs),in which Pt-based catalysts employed in the cathodic catalyst layer(CCL)account for the major portion of the *** nonprecious metal catalysts(NPMCs)show appreciable activity and stability in the oxygen reduction reaction(ORR),the performance of fuel cells based on NPMCs remains unsatisfactory compared to those using Pt-based ***,most studies on NPMC-based fuel cells focus on developing highly active catalysts rather than facilitating oxygen *** this work,the oxygen transport behavior in CCLs based on highly active Fe-N-C catalysts is comprehensively explored through the elaborate design of two types of membrane electrode structures,one containing low-Pt-based CCL and NPMCbased dummy catalyst layer(DCL)and the other containing only the NPMC-based *** Zn-N-C based DCLs of different thickness,the bulk oxygen transport resistance at the unit thickness in NPMC-based CCL was quantified via the limiting current method combined with linear fitting ***,the local and bulk resistances in NPMC-based CCLs were quantified via the limiting current method and scanning electron microscopy,*** show that the ratios of local and bulk oxygen transport resistances in NPMCbased CCL are 80%and 20%,respectively,and that an enhancement of local oxygen transport is critical to greatly improve the performance of NPMC-based ***,the activity of active sites per unit in NPMCbased CCLs was determined to be lower than that in the Pt-based CCL,thus explaining worse cell performance of NPMC-based membrane electrode assemblys(MEAs).It is believed that the development of NPMC-based PEMFCs should proceed not only through the design of catalysts with higher activity but also through the improvement of oxygen transport in the CCL.