Abstract
Because electron, proton, and oxygen are necessary for the cathode reaction in polymer electrolyte fuel cell, achieving the optimum structure of electrode catalyst layer and the efficient transport of the reactants is significantly effective to reduce the usage of Pt catalyst in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEFCs). In this paper, we estimated the major parameters such as the radius of the carbon agglomerate with polymer electrolyte and the thickness of the catalyst layer from structural observation of the fabricated CCM by a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). The polarization characteristics of the cell performance were calculated using an agglomerate model with the experimentally estimated parameters, and the simulation model was validated by comparing the simulated and experimental results. Then, we evaluated the effects of the major parameters such as the polymer electrolyte film thickness covering carbon agglomerates on the cell performance by the simulation, and present a new concept effective for reducing the identified major resistances such as the oxygen diffusion resistance in the polymer by controlling the film structure of polymer electrolyte.
