Various electrode deposition methods, such as air-brushing, decal transfer, screen printing and electrostatic spraying, have been explored to fabricate high-performance catalyst layer for proton exchange membrane fuel cells. Among them, the electrostatic spray deposition dragged a great attention due to the improved fuel cell performance at extremely low platinum mass loading. In this paper, we systematically investigated the effect of mass loading of platinum by using the electro-spray deposition. The electrode morphology of the electro-sprayed catalyst layer is compared with that of the conventional decal-transferred catalyst layer to highlight its unique microstructure. As a result, the electro-sprayed catalyst layer showed 2 times higher current density at 0.5 V as compared to the decal-transferred catalyst layer. Thus, it can be suggested that a great deal of efforts must put onto the microstructure of the catalyst layer to overcome the severe performance decrease at low platinum loading.

Keywords: Electrostatic spray deposition, Catalyst layer, Membrane electrode assembly, Proton exchange membrane Fuel cell