Perovskite-Carbon Joint Substrate for Practical Application in Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells under Low-Humidity/High-Temperature Conditions.

Highly active catalysts with promising water retention are favorable for proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) operating under low-humidity/high-temperature conditions. When PEMFCs operate under low-humidity/high-temperature conditions, performance attenuation rapidly occurs owing to reduced proton conductivity of dehydrated membrane electrode assemblies. Herein, we load platinum onto a perovskite-carbon joint substrate (BaZr 0.1 Ce 0.7 Y 0.1 Yb 0.1 O 3-σ -XC-72R) to construct a highly active and durable catalyst with good water retention capacity. We propose that the Pt/(BZCYYb-C) catalyst layer at cathode can promote the water back diffusion of produced water from the cathode to the membrane, thus preventing the decay of fuel-cell performance under low-humidity/high-temperature conditions. The catalyst exhibited outstanding mass activity of 0.542 A mg pt -1 at 0.9 V vs RHE. PEMFCs with such a catalyst delivered very high peak power densities (1.70/1.14 W cm -2 under H 2 -O 2 /air conditions at 70 °C) and kept 85.3%/92.1% of initial performance values under low-humidity/high-temperature conditions (relative humidity 60%@70 °C/100 °C).