Polymer electrolyte membrane water electrolyzer (PEMWE) performance mostly depends on the catalyst layer (CL) composition and microstructure. The CL microstructure is influenced by catalyst ink composition and fabrication process. Due to the use of an unsupported catalyst (IrO_x) in PEMWE, the porosity of the CL is low, resulting in a low CL surface area and high activation loss. By increasing the porosity of the CL, it is hypothesized that more catalyst surface area will be exposed to the reactant and electrolyte. One method to increase the CL porosity is to use pore formers (PF): sacrificial particles that are added to the ink and then removed after CL fabrication, leaving additional pores. Limited work has been done on the use of PF in fuel cell applications which resulted in an increase of the porosity and the surface area. No work has been done using PF in PEMWE application. In this study, a PF is used to study the effect of PF addition on PEMWE microstructure and performance.
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