Polydopamine as a promising candidate for the design of high performance and corrosion-tolerant polymer electrolyte fuel cell electrodes

By Hongtao Long and Doriane Del Frari and Arnaud Martin and Joffrey Didierjean and Vincent Ball and Marc Michel and Hicham Ibn El Ahrach
Published in Journal of Power Sources NULL 2016

Abstract

Carbon materials such as carbon black or nanotubes suffer from degradation when subjected to harsh conditions occurring in a Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFCs) electrode. Hence, nowadays it is more and more important to search for alternative support materials. The present work shows the results for the incorporation of alternative materials into \PEMFCs\ electrode architectures. Commercially available Multi-Walled NanoTubes (MWNTs) are used as a support for Pt nanoparticles in combination with Polydopamine (PDA). The role of \MWNTs\ is to confer a high electronic conductivity and help to form a porous network. On the other side the role of polydopamine is both to promote the proton conductivity similarly to ionomers such as Nafion and to protect the \MWNTs\ against corrosion. The fuel cell polarization test shows a maximum power density of 780

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