One of the major issues of the application of low-temperature fuel cells like polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEFC) under automotive conditions is the limited durability. The decrease of performance of a cell is due to a number of physicochemical effects, like carbon-support corrosion, platinum oxidation and dissolution, Ostwald's ripening, poisoning through local adsorption of pollutants, or regarding the ionomer, mechanical and chemical degradation [1-5]. All these phenomena act at the same time during the operation of a PEMFC. This makes it difficult to estimate the impact of each of them on the reduction of cell potential over time [6], which also strongly depends on operating conditions and materials. Indeed, in some cases, the degradation of the membrane was identified to be the dominant mechanism for performance loss [7].
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