Concentration Effects of Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Degradation Products on Oxygen Reduction Activity for Three Platinum Catalysts

Abstract

© The Author(s) 2014. A rotating disk electrode (RDE) along with cyclic voltammetry (CV) and linear sweep voltammetry (LSV), were used to investigate the impact of two model compounds representing degradation products of Nafion and 3M perfluorinated sulfonic acid membranes on the electrochemical surface area (ECA) and oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) activity of polycrystalline Pt, nano-structured thin film (NSTF) Pt (3M), and Pt/Vulcan carbon (Pt/Vu) (TKK) electrodes. ORR kinetic currents (measured at 0.9 V and transport corrected) were found to decrease linearly with the log of concentration for both model compounds on all Pt surfaces studied.Model compound adsorption effects on ECA were more abstruse due to competitive organic anion adsorption on Pt surfaces superimposing with the hydrogen underpotential deposition (HUPD) region.