Corrosion-resistant mesoporous carbon allowing for durable, high-performance hydrogen fuel cells for heavy-duty vehicle applications

Abstract

Proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) have emerged as an efficient and clean energy conversion technology, utilizing platinum (Pt)-based catalysts to drive the electrochemical reactions that generate power, including nanoporous carbon-supported Pt nanoparticles. However, developing catalyst layers with exceptional stability has been a challenge, which is essential to achieving the 25 000-hour lifetime required for heavy-duty fuel cell applications. While Pt stability is critical, mitigating carbon support corrosion in the catalyst layer is equally important. Here, we show that tuning the properties of mesoporous carbon supports—specifically, pore size and the concentration of surface oxygen functional groups and H-terminated groups via high-temperature treatment—can overcome this challenge. Pore sizes of 8 nm or smaller are found to mitigate Pt dissolution and performance losses over 10 000–90 000 accelerated stress cycles. Additionally, high-temperature treatment at 2000 °C increased the carbon's crystallinity while retaining a BET surface area of 240 m² g⁻¹. This stability enabled the catalyst layer to maintain its initial performance after 40 hours of voltage hold at 1.2 V, demonstrating exceptional durability. These advancements are a critical step toward commercializing fuel cells for transportation applications and provide insights for advanced catalyst layer designs in clean energy conversion systems.