Antimony doped tin oxide applied in the gas diffusion layer for proton exchange membrane fuel cells

• Antimony doped tin oxide (ATO) was firstly used as a conductive material in MPL.
• The GDL-ATO had high durability after electrochemical oxidation for 55 h.
• The difference in through-plane resistance of GDLs with ATO and XC-72 was not evident.
• The fuel cell performance of GDL-ATO and XC-72 was closed at low current densities.

In this paper, antimony doped tin oxide (ATO) was firstly used as a conductive material in the microporous layer (MPL). ATO had higher electrochemical stability than XC-72 carbon powder. With the same thickness of MPL, the electrochemical corrosion behavior of gas diffusion layers (GDLs) prepared with ATO and XC-72 carbon powder in the simulated PEMFC operation environment were examined and the results showed that the GDL prepared with ATO had higher durability after oxidation for 55 h. Besides, the fuel cell performance with the GDLs prepared with ATO and XC-72 carbon powder as the cathode GDLs were evaluated and a very small difference between those two cells was observed at low current densities, which demonstrated that GDL prepared with ATO had wide application prospects.