Achieving high performance and durability with ultra-low precious metal nanolayer on porous transport layer for PEMWE application
Abhay Gupta, Yasin Mehdizadeh Chellehbari, Samaneh Shahgaldi
Abstract
Green hydrogen produced from polymer electrolyte membrane water electrolysis (PEMWE) provides a promising pathway to decarbonization. However, excessive dependence on Pt and Ir in the catalyst synthesis and anticorrosive coating on porous transport layers (PTL) drives the cost of PEMWE technology . As an alternative to the Pt-coated commercial PTL, sputtered multilayer and co-deposited TaPt coatings with low Pt loading were developed. Ex-situ electrochemical and physical characterizations (potentiostatic and galvanostatic polarization, scanning electron microscopy, interfacial contact resistance (ICR) testing, and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy), and in-situ PEMWE cell testing was conducted to examine the PTL coating viability. Under the ex-situ PTL electrochemical stability analysis protocol developed in this work, the multilayered TaPt coating exhibited a higher simulated durability (96 h at 2.0 A cm −2 ) and lower ICR (1.9 mΩ cm 2 ) than the existing commercial Pt-coated PTL (15 h simulated durability and 2.1 mΩ cm 2 ). Low compressive stress and low extent of Galvanic coupling led to an improvement in the durability, conductivity, and in-situ performance of the TaPt multilayered PTL coating.