Volume 44, Issue 13 pp. 10155-10167
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Solving Nafion poisoning of ORR catalysts with an accessible layer: designing a nanostructured core-shell Pt/C catalyst via a one-step self-assembly for PEMFC

Fen Zhou

Fen Zhou

State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China

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Yizhi Yan

Yizhi Yan

State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China

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Shumeng Guan

Shumeng Guan

State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China

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Wei Guo

Corresponding Author

Wei Guo

State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China

Correspondence

Wei Guo and Mu Pan, State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, China.

Email: [email protected] (W. G) and [email protected] (M. P)

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Meiling Sun

Meiling Sun

Energy Storage & Distributed Resources Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, USA

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Mu Pan

Corresponding Author

Mu Pan

State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China

Correspondence

Wei Guo and Mu Pan, State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, China.

Email: [email protected] (W. G) and [email protected] (M. P)

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First published: 13 July 2020
Citations: 27

Funding information: China Postdoctoral Science Foundation funded project, Grant/Award Number: No. 2018T110813; the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Grant/Award Number: WUT: 193343001; The Key Technologies Research and Development Program, Grant/Award Number: 2017YFB0102801

Summary

A core-shell Pt/C@NCL300 catalyst with an accessible layer was designed to recover lost ORR activity and was constructed via a one-step self-assembly process in this paper. A thin porous layer derived from Nafion was first formed on the surface of Pt/C catalyst to create a shell. This first coating successfully separated the Nafion and Pt particles in the catalysts and reducing the negative impact of Nafion on ORR activity and enhancing the fuel cell performance. The newly fabricated Pt/C@NCL300 catalyst exhibited much higher specific activity than the original Pt/C catalyst in RDE tests under the same conditions and were comparable to the activity of Pt/C electrode without Nafion poisoning. Moreover, the fuel cell with Pt/C@NCL300 catalyst exhibited a higher power density without an obvious increase in proton transport and O2 transport resistance compared to that of a Pt/C fuel cell with a low Pt loading. This result indicates that coating the Pt/C catalyst with a layer accessible for oxygen and protons is a promising way to effectively promote Pt-based catalysts that work under normal operating conditions.

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