Enhancing durability of automotive fuel cells via selective electrical conductivity induced by tungsten oxide layer coated directly on membrane electrode assembly.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 37756401.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1126/sciadv.adi5696 and PMC identifier 10530077.
- Licence recorded as CC BY-NC.
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Abstract
The poor durability, attributed to catalyst corrosion during start-up/shutdown (SU/SD), is a major obstacle to the commercialization of fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs). We recently achieved durability enhancement under SU/SD conditions by implementing a metal-insulator transition (MIT) using proton intercalation/deintercalation in WO<sub>3</sub>. However, such oxide-supported catalysts were unsuitable for direct application to the mass production stage of membrane electrode assembly (MEA) process due to their physical and chemical properties. Here, we report a unique approach that achieves the same durability enhancement in SU/SD situations while being directly applicable to the conventional MEA fabrication process. We coated WO<sub>3</sub> on the bipolar plate, gas diffusion layer, and MEA to investigate whether the MIT phenomenon was realized. The WO<sub>3</sub>-coated MEA demonstrated 94% performance retention during SU/SD, the highest level to our knowledge. It can directly contribute to enhancing the durability of commercial FCEVs and be immediately applied to the MEA mass production process.