Modelling and experimental validation of high performance low platinum multilayer cathode for polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs)

•Comsol numerical model developed for a multilayer cathode of PEM fuel cell.•Influence of carbon–Nafion layer porosity on the cell performance.•Effect of the number of Pt sputtered layers on the mass oxygen fraction and saturation distribution.•Effect of (Pt/C) agglomerate radius on the cell performance.•Effect of (Pt/C) agglomerate structure thickness on the cell performance.

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate numerically the feasibility of using a sputtering technique for the design of Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell cathodes having low platinum loading and offering high performance. A two-dimensional steady state model accounting for electrochemical reactions, momentum, saturation, species and charge conservation equations have been developed. It has been applied to three different cathode configurations where the platinum is assumed to be sputtered one, two and three times on the same number of carbon–Nafion layers (CNL). The predicted polarization curves were validated with the experimental data obtained in our laboratory. Our results showed that the best performance is obtained with a three Pt sputtered layer cathode. A parametric study proved the dependence of the PEM fuel cell cathode performance on the CNL porosity, the (Pt/C) agglomerate radius and the thickness of this agglomerate structure.