Bifunctional oxygen electrode with corrosion-resistive gas diffusion layer for unitized regenerative fuel cell

To develop the unitized regenerative fuel cell (URFC) with low cost and high performance, a novel bifunctional oxygen electrode with a thin-film electrocatalyst layer and a corrosion-resistive gas diffusion layer (GDL) prepared by the carbon paper backing and a protective micro-porous layer (MPL) was developed. The protective MPL was made of the IrO2 deposited fine Ti powders. The cycle performance and polarization curves for both fuel cell and water electrolysis modes of URFC operation were investigated. The cycle performance of the URFC was stable during 20 cycles. It exhibits a high fuel cell performance as good as the URFC using the conventional GDL and a much higher water electrolysis performance.