Designing fuel cell catalyst support for superior catalytic activity and low mass-transport resistance

The development of low-Platinum content polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEFCs) has been hindered by inexplicable reduction of oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) activity and unexpected O₂ mass transport resistance when catalysts have been interfaced with ionomer in a cathode catalyst layer. In this study, we introduce a bottom-up designed spherical carbon support with intrinsic Nitrogen-doping that permits uniform dispersion of Pt catalyst, which reproducibly exhibits high ORR mass activity of 638 ± 68 mA mg_Pt^-1 at 0.9 V and 100% relative humidity (RH) in a membrane electrode assembly. The uniformly distributed Nitrogen-functional surface groups on the carbon support surface promote high ionomer coverage directly evidenced by high-resolution electron microscopy and nearly humidity-independent double layer capacitance. The hydrophilic nature of the carbon surface appears to ensure high activity and performance for operation over a broad range of RH. The paradigm challenging large carbon support (~135 nm) combined with favourable ionomer film structure, hypothesized recently to arise from the interactions of an ionic moiety of the ionomer and Nitrogen-functional group of the catalyst support, results in an unprecedented low local oxygen transport resistance (5.0 s cm^-1) for ultra-low Pt loading (34 ± 2 μg_Pt cm^-2) catalyst layer.