Polydopamine as a promising candidate for the design of high performance and corrosion-tolerant polymer electrolyte fuel cell electrodes

Carbon materials such as carbon black or nanotubes suffer from degradation when subjected to harsh conditions occurring in a Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFCs) electrode. Hence, nowadays it is more and more important to search for alternative support materials. The present work shows the results for the incorporation of alternative materials into PEMFCs electrode architectures. Commercially available Multi-Walled NanoTubes (MWNTs) are used as a support for Pt nanoparticles in combination with Polydopamine (PDA). The role of MWNTs is to confer a high electronic conductivity and help to form a porous network. On the other side the role of polydopamine is both to promote the proton conductivity similarly to ionomers such as Nafion and to protect the MWNTs against corrosion. The fuel cell polarization test shows a maximum power density of 780 mW cm−2 and a Pt utilization of 6051 mW mg(Pt)−1. The Pt utilization reached in this work is almost three times higher than for Pt/MWNTs electrodes containing the same Pt loading. Beside this, it is also shown for the first time that PDA serves as protective layer against carbon corrosion.