Development and Scale Up of Enhanced ORR Pt‐based Catalysts for PEMFCs

Abstract

HySA/Catalysis has developed Pt‐only materials supported on Vulcan and Ketjenblack carbon, at various Pt loadings in the form of the HySA‐V and HySA‐K series of catalysts. These materials have been proven on both an ex‐situ (TF‐RDE techniques) and in situ (single cell MEA testing) basis to be on par with state‐of‐the‐art commercial benchmark materials. Despite these development achievements high‐performance platinum alloy catalysts that address sluggish oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) kinetics are required in order to minimize the precious metal content and ultimately the cost of fuel cell catalysts. Conveyed in this paper is a systematic investigation of the effect of alloying counterpart deposition sequence on the electrochemical and physical properties of the dealloyed class of advance ORR catalysts at a laboratory synthesis scale. Progression from laboratory scale synthesis to pre‐commercial production is presented and in‐situ single cell performance of scaled dealloyed catalyst materials is given.

Tailoring Catalyst Morphology towards High Performance for Low Pt Loaded PEMFC Cathodes

“…4,2 Unfortunately, for more advanced ORR catalyst concepts like shape-controlled Pt-alloys 5,6 and confined alloy nanoparticles 7 which show substantially higher ORR activities in rotating disk electrode (RDE) experiments, it has not yet been possible to prepare MEAs with good high current density performance. 4,8 Reasons for this may include the difficulty of preparing electrodes with suitable structure and homogeneous ionomer distribution.…”

ZIF‐8 derived CeO2‐Fe3O4@Fe‐N/C catalyst for oxygen reduction reaction

“…The ORR at the cathode represents the bottleneck in fuel cell performance [12]. Therefore, it is particularly important to develop a cathode catalyst that can reduce ORR overpotential and accelerate its reaction rate [13,14]. Nowadays, the cathode electrocatalysts of most commercial fuel cells are still platinum-based catalysts [15].…”

An electrochemical energy conversion realized through Ag@Pt/rGO nano-catalyst enhancing activity of the ORR process in a PEMFC

“…Such electrode structures provide remarkable properties when utilized in the aforementioned fuel cells. These properties include: i) enhanced catalytic activities attributed to the ligand performances, leading to changes in the d-band position and, hence, improving the charge transfer, ii) providing higher activation energies, iii) possessing better adsorption behaviors in particular for the oxygen reduction reaction, and iv) consuming lower amounts of the Pt, leading to the overall cost reduction [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28]. It is noteworthy to mention that, in such oxygen reduction reactions, the catalysis occurred as a surface phenomenon [29].…”