Designing independent water transport channels to improve water flooding in ultra-thin nanoporous film cathodes for PEMFCs

Utilization of 3D nanostructured Pt cathodes could obviously improve performances of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) owing to the reduced tortuosity and the bi-continuous nanoporous structure. However, these cathodes usually suffer from the flooding problem ascribed to the ionomer-free and nanoscale pores which are more susceptible to water condensation. In this paper, ultra-thin nanoporous metal films (100 nm) were utilized to construct PEMFC cathodes and independent transport channels were designed separately for water and gas aiming at the flooding problem. Nanoporous gold (NPG) film was used as the model support for loading Pt nanoparticles owing to its controllable and stable structure. After optimizing the polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) content and carbon loading in the gas diffusion layer (GDL), plasma treatment under O2 atmosphere was used to pattern the GDL with independent water transport channels. The obtained liquid permeation coefficients and oxygen gains demonstrated the obviously improved water and O2 transport. By using a home-made optimized GDL and a nanoporous film cathode with pore size ∼60 nm, the flooding problem could be facilely solved. With a Pt loading of ∼16 μg cm−2, this 3D nanostructured cathode exhibits a PEMFC performance of ∼957 mW cm−2 at 80 °C. The Pt power efficiency is about 4 times higher than that of the commercial Pt/C cathode (50 μg cm−2, 756 mW cm−2). Obviously, this study provides a simple but effective methodology to solve the water flooding problem in the ultra-thin nanoporous film cathodes which is applicable for other types of 3D nanostructured PEMFC cathodes.