Electrochemical performance of PEM fuel cell with Pt–Ru electro-catalyst layers deposited by sputtering

Abstract

In this paper, we investigated the performance of the single fuel cell with four gas diffusion electrodes with differently structured Pt–Ru electro-catalyst layers, as deposited by sputtering. The effects of the structural design of the Pt–Ru catalyst are discussed with reference to I–V polarization curves. Experimental results indicate that the performance of the fuel cell was affected by the microstructure of the sputter-deposited Pt–Ru layers on the E-TEK carbon clothes electrodes, the gas pressure, the operating temperature and the internally humidified temperatures. In the study range, the performance of the fuel cell is improved as the gas pressure, operating temperatures and the internal temperature increased. The measured I–V polarization curves reveal that the best performance of the designed layer electrodes was exhibited by model II with Pt/Ru multilayers, at a gas pressure of 200 KPa, a fuel cell operating temperature of 70 °C and an internally humidified temperature of 60 °C. The efficiencies of single cells with various structural designs follow the descending order model II, model III, model IV and model I.