Gas diffusion layer with titanium carbide for a unitized regenerative fuel cell

In this work, a gas diffusion layer (GDL) prepared with metallic ceramics TiC for a unitized regenerative fuel cell (URFC) was first investigated. By the measurements of morphological characteristic, electrical conductivity, absolute through-plane permeability and electrochemical stability, the characteristics of the novel GDLs and the conventional one were compared. A high corrosion-resistive and low-cost GDL with 80 wt.% TiC and 20 wt.% IrTiOx was expected to enhance the cycle performance of URFC. And the total loading of Ir in the novel URFC was only 1.3 mg cm−2. The URFC with the novel GDL exhibited the similar initial performance under both fuel cell and electrolysis modes as that using the conventional GDL. However, the life cycle testing over 60 h showed that the URFC with the novel GDL was more stable than the URFC with the traditional GDL, indicating that the GDL with TiC and IrTiOx was beneficial to improve the cycle life of the URFC.