Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
1270268 International Journal of Hydrogen Energy 2016 9 Pages PDF
Abstract

•Polyaniline nanorods are grown on gas diffusion layer by in situ polymerization.•The length of polyaniline nanorods can be changed by altering polymerization condition.•The polyaniline nanorods can increase oxygen transport of cathode catalyst layer.•The PEMFC with optimized polyaniline nanorods shows better performance.

Catalyst layers (CLs) with spatially ordered structure can improve mass transport of reactants/products, which is essential for the high performance of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). In this study, aligned polyaniline (PANI) nanorods grown on gas diffusion layers by in situ polymerization are used as supports for platinum to fabricate ordered CLs. The length and diameter of the PANI nanorods can be controlled by optimizing the reaction temperatures or the aniline concentrations during the in situ polymerization process. With the optimized aligned PANI nanorods as supports of cathode, the mass specific power density of the PEMFC reaches 2.5 kW gPt−1, which is 21% higher than that of the conventional PEMFC without PANI. This improvement can be attributed to the reduced oxygen transport resistance revealed by oxygen gain and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy.

Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering Chemistry Electrochemistry
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