FTIR spectroscopic imaging of aged fuel cell components

Abstract

Regarding fuel cells as an environmen-tally friendly energy converter one of the major unsolved problems beside the costs is an insufficient lifetime. In poly-mer electrolyte fuel cells humidity management is one of the key point for their performance. The water management is mainly determined by the hydrophobic/hydrophilic properties of the gas diffusion layer (GDL) including the micro porous layer. Thus the degradation of GDL and micro porous layers MPL therein are the key point for the understanding of reduced fuel cell lifetimes. In the past the partially decomposition of the polymers in the GDL and the MPL was observed by X-ray photoelec-tron spectroscopy measurements on fresh and aged GDL and MPL. The decomposition of the polymers due to fuel cell operation changes the hydrophobic/hydrophilic properties of the GDL, MPL and catalyst layer and conse-quently also the water balance in the cell.This poster demonstrates the applicability of Fourier transform infrared microscopy (FTIR) and Raman microscopy to investigate membrane-electrode-assemblies (MEA) and their components, e.g. the gas diffusion layer (GDL) and micro porous layer (MPL). For the study of the catalyst layer other methods that provide direct information on elemental material composition are more suitable. The presented data comprise fresh MEAs only that can be used as reference samples to study specific degradation mechanism