Ten-fold reduction from the state-of-the-art platinum loading of electrodes prepared by electrospraying for high temperature proton exchange membrane fuel cells

Abstract

The electrospraying deposition technique was used to prepare electrodes with a Pt loading of only 0.1 mgPt cm−2 and make membrane electrode assemblies (MEAs) for High Temperature-Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (HT-PEMFCs) based in H3PO4-doped polybenzimidazole membranes. An MEA prepared from binderless electrodes yielded a maximum performance of 420 mW cm−2 (i.e. a cathode specific power of 4.2 kW gPt−1) when tested with H2/Air at ambient pressure, that is, to the best of our knowledge, the highest performance ever reported at such a low Pt loading in HT-PEMFCs. The durability of this MEA was not affected by both, the absence of binder or the low Pt loading of the catalytic layer, since it worked continuously for >3000 h at 0.2 A cm−2 with a performance loss of 4% and a voltage decay of 5 μV h−1 in the last 1500 h.