Effects of Nafion impregnation using inkjet printing for membrane electrode assemblies in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells

•Using inkjet printing to deposit Nafion ionomer onto the PEMFC catalyst layer.•Inkjet printing provides a more suitable mode of Nafion impregnation than spray painting.•The appropriate Nafion loading is 0.64 mg cm−2 by inkjet printing.•Inkjet printing can improve MEA performance with a small amount of Nafion ionomer.

We present a method of using inkjet printing to deposit Nafion ionomer as the transport media onto catalyst layer made into membrane electrode assemblies (MEAs) for polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEMFCs). This method provides a more suitable mode of controlling the solution deposition than the existing deposition methods such as spray painting. The cyclic voltammetry results also show that the inkjet printing method has better performance than spray painting by improving catalyst efficiency. Using the appropriate Nafion loading of 0.64 mg cm−2 by inkjet printing, we have demonstrated that this technique can be used to improve the performance of the MEA for PEMFCs.

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