One of the root causes of this limitation is the decrease in proton conductivity of the membrane during long term operation. In order to avoid the decrease in proton conductivity, reducing the contamination of metal cations in the membrane is an effective way. Metal cations, which contaminate into the membrane during operation, reduce the proton conductivity of the membrane due to decrease in the proton path in the membrane. Proton conductivity loss by contamination of metal cations is critical for the high temperature performance.

In order to reduce cation contamination into the membrane, it is necessary to understand its mechanism. An in-situ measurement for the amount of metal cations should be helpful to understand the phenomena. For this reason, we propose an in-situ quantitative measurement for cation contamination ratio in PEMFC.

Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) was adapted to the measurement because cation transport inside the membrane was expected to be detectable with EIS. Experimental results showed that EIS spectrum under a certain condition reflects metal cation contamination ratio strongly, which was proposed to be an indicator of cation contamination ratio. The mechanism of EIS spectrum change is explained theoretically by a numerical simulation using a simple model of cation and water transport. Detail of the measurement will be shown in the conference.

Therefore this EIS measurement is proposed for the analysis of metal cation contamination mechanisms in PEMFC. Further study will elucidate the impact of catalyst layer, membrane and metal cation species against the EIS spectrum.