Comparative Study of the Degradation of Different Carbon Supported Pt Fuel Cell Catalysts

• Main Authors: Hartl, Katrin, Hanzlik, Marianne, Arenz, Matthias
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1938-5862; 1938-6737
• DOI: 10.1149/1.3635614

Before characterizing fuel cell catalysts in time and cost intensive MEA or fuel cell stack tests, it is advantageous to evaluate catalysts in fast and inexpensive electrochemical half-cell tests. Recently, we developed a new methodology for accelerated degradation tests in electrochemical half-cells, IL-TEM, which enables the comparison of the surface area loss of the catalysts, determined by RDE, with the change in local structure, e.g. the detachment of individual particles from the high surface area carbon support, determined by TEM. In this presentation we demonstrate by IL-TEM that relative small differences in the synthesis of the catalyst can have a pronounced effect in the observed degradation mechanism.