Cyclic Voltammetry analysis of catalyst degradation modes in Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells

<p>The major source of inefficiency in Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells (PEFCs) is the sluggish nature of the Oxygen Reduction Reaction (ORR) at the cathode catalyst layer, which is typically boosted by using Platinum catalysts, However, the nanometer-sized catalyst particles are unstable and prone to degradation over the operational lifetime of a PEFC thus limiting its performance. Here, a thermo-kinetic model that takes into account the dissolution and oxidation mode of degradation of the carbon-supported catalysts is considered which serves as an enabler to simulate a cyclic voltammogram (CV) based on a standard durability protocol. The model is implemented in MATLAB employing an ode solver based on the Runge-Kutta algorithm (the pertinent files are named as "CV_model.m" and "CV_function.m"). Two representative protocols or input voltage profiles have been considered - triangular and trapezoidal. Further, as verification, the triangular voltage profile case also includes an experimental dataset ("Experimental_data.csv"). </p>