Study of Oxide Supports for PEFC Catalyst

Engineering Catalyst Layers for Next‐Generation Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells: A Review of Design, Materials, and Methods

“…[ 394,395 ] These doped metal oxide‐based supports typically show lower electrical conductivity and initial performance, but higher current density after AST due to their superior corrosion resistance, particularly at high potential. [ 77,394–399 ] However, these support materials suffer from less well‐understood degradation mechanics than CB, such as the loss of dopant during operation (shown in Figure 32 ), causing a reduction of electrical conductivity. [ 398,400 ] Takabatake et al.…”

“…Doped metal oxides offer a worthy potential replacement to traditional carbon supports, with both support and catalyst durability improvements being reported, due to the interaction between the support and the catalyst, which modifies the electronic structure of the catalyst and potentially improves its durability. [ 399,404 ] However, they suffer from some conductivity limitations and increased difficulty of functionalization of the metal oxide surface compared to carbon based supports.…”

Electrocatalysts for PEM Fuel Cells

“…Especially, carbon corrosion is a serious problem for cathode catalysts because the carbon corrosion reaction is accelerated by possible potential excursions caused by a H 2 /air front at the cathode and local H 2 starvation at the anode. [95] Without these protection systems, it would be difficult to suppress catalyst degradation including the carbon corrosion reaction at high potentials, and thus the development of alternative oxidation-resistant catalyst support materials is very important to reduce the system cost. [86,94] To prevent such high potential conditions, current PEMFC power systems used in fuel cell vehicles are often equipped with expensive cell voltagemonitoring systems.…”

“…Corrosion of the carbon support could also be a factor in anode degradation because an extremely high potential would be applied to the anode during cell reversal due to gross hydrogen starvation as mentioned above . To prevent such high potential conditions, current PEMFC power systems used in fuel cell vehicles are often equipped with expensive cell voltage‐monitoring systems . Without these protection systems, it would be difficult to suppress catalyst degradation including the carbon corrosion reaction at high potentials, and thus the development of alternative oxidation‐resistant catalyst support materials is very important to reduce the system cost.…”

IrOXSupported onto Niobium-Doped Titanium Dioxide as an Anode Reversal Tolerant Electrocatalyst for Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells

“…To avoid damage due to the aforementioned cell reversal behavior in the anode, this can only be intentionally prevented through system control strategies, such as cell voltage monitoring, exhaust gas monitoring, and flushing of the anode channel to avoid accumulation of nitrogen and/or water, , which will make FCVs complex and expensive. A material-based solution against cell reversal is to use a reversal tolerant anode (RTA) containing an OER catalyst, such as iridium oxide (IrO 2 ) to accelerate the water electrolysis rather than the carbon oxidation. − Although the carbon oxidation is thermodynamically favorable with lower potentials, and Pt is proved to electrochemically promote the COR, its kinetics is still much lower than that of water electrolysis on the OER catalyst surface .…”