An investigation into the development and use of hybrid cathodes in high temperature proton exchange membrane fuel cells was undertaken.  Previously, non-pgm materials had been developed for use as oxygen reduction catalysts in proton exchange membrane fuel cells[1, 2].  Compared to platinum, long term durability of these non-pgm materials at the elevated temperatures associated with high temperature fuel cells is negatively impacted by the low active site density.  In this work, these non-pgm materials are combined with low platinum loadings in order to take advantage of the high activity of the non-pgms as well as the high active site density of platinum.  This reduction of platinum content allows for a drastic reduction in the price of membrane electrode assemblies (MEAs).  Additionally, these non-pgm materials have shown very high tolerance towards phosphate poisoning (Figure 1) when compared to platinum[3].  Hybrid cathodes were fabricated and used in conjunction with proprietary membranes (TPS Membrane, Advent Technologies) and operated between 160°C and 180°C in order to evaluate performance and stability.

Acknowledgment:

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the Department of Energy-Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Fuel Cell Technology Office under an Incubator grant (DE-EE0006965).  Use of the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Light source, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences under Contract No. DE-AC02-76SF00515. Use of Beamline 2-2 at SSRL was partially supported by the National Synchrotron Light Source II, Brookhaven National Laboratory, under U.S. Department of Energy Contract No. DE-SC0012704. Use of the beamline 9-BM in Advanced Photon Source, an Office of Science User Facility operated for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory, was supported by the U.S. DOE under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. MRCAT operations are supported by the Department of Energy and the MRCAT member institutions. This research used resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357.

References

1.            Strickland, K., et al., Highly active oxygen reduction non-platinum group metal electrocatalyst without direct metal-nitrogen coordination. Nat Commun, 2015. 6.

2.            Serov, A., K. Artyushkova, and P. Atanassov, Fe-N-C Oxygen Reduction Fuel Cell Catalyst Derived from Carbendazim: Synthesis, Structure, and Reactivity. Advanced Energy Materials, 2014. 4(10): p. n/a-n/a.

3.            He, Q., et al., Mitigating Phosphate Anion Poisoning of Cathodic Pt/C Catalysts in Phosphoric Acid Fuel Cells. The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, 2013. 117(10): p. 4877-4887.