Modifying Carbon Supports of Catalyst for the Oxygen Reduction Reaction in Vehicle PEMFCs

Abstract For current carbon-supported Pt catalysts in vehicle proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs), the insufficient stability and durability of carbon supports are severe limitations under operating conditions. This paper adopts the accelerated stress test (AST) method to study the carbon corrosion of catalysts, which is significant to efficiently select the catalysts supports in fuel cells. Graphitized carbon blacks with various surface properties are heated under different conditions, followed by evaluation of their antioxidation capacity with the AST. It is shown that optimally graphitized carbon blacks demonstrate superior stability, retaining a constant quinone/hydroquinone (QH) transition peak potential for over 70,000 AST cycles. A Pt catalyst supported on the selected graphitized carbon exhibits excellent durability at both the rotating disk electrode (RDE) and membrane electrode assembly (MEA) levels. The final specific mass activity (MA) of the optimum catalyst is 47.87 mA/mg Pt , which is 2.06 times that of commercial Pt/C (23.31 mA/mg Pt ) in the RDE tests. The final maximum power density of the optimum catalyst is 525.68 mW/cm 2 , which is 305.52 mW/cm 2 higher than that of commercial Pt/C after undergoing the AST during the MEA measurements. These results prove that the rational surface features of carbon supports play a vital role in improving the overall fuel cell performance by realizing uniform dispersion of Pt nanoparticles, resisting corrosion, and reinforcing metal–support interactions.