Exploring the XRF technique as a tool to estimate the degree of leaching in alloy-catalysts used for PEMFCs

Recent exhibition of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) technology in automotive and renewable energy industries has established itself as an essential technology for the forthcoming ‘hydrogen economy’. Current development in PEMFC technology employs the alloy-catalyst to counter the stability issues of PEMFCs. However, the possibility of leaching-out of one of the constituent elements of the alloy-catalyst during the continuous operation of PEMFCs is undeniable. In this paper we investigate the XRF technique to estimate the degree of leaching of these alloys during the standardized support/catalyst degradation protocols.
XRF technique is simple, direct and can readily provide the relative estimation of elements under investigation. The drop casted alloy-catalyst on glassy carbon (GC) disk of rotating disk electrode (RDE) are characterized by thin-film RDE technique for their oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) activity and support/catalyst-focused accelerated stress test (AST) protocols. The alloy-catalysts were characterized before and after AST protocols using microstructural characterizations and XRF technique to estimate the degree of leaching in alloy-catalysts. The details of the results will be presented during the conference.