In the present work, membrane electrode assembly degradation of a 4-cell stack with specially designed twin catalyst coated membranes (twin-CCMs) was carried out for 1600 h under open circuit voltage (OCV) conditions. Four types of membrane with various thicknesses were employed in the experiment. Each twin-CCM was composed of two membranes of the same type with a catalyst layer coated only on one side. The purpose of this special configuration was to facilitate postmortem analysis of the membrane\udafter degradation due to the detachable membrane structure. By means of several in situ electrochemical measurements, the performance of the individual cells was analysed every 200 h during the degradation process. Postmortem analyses such as scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, and\udinfrared imaging were also conducted to identify the membrane degradation mechanisms after exposure\udto OCV. The results indicate that membrane degradation, which correlates with electrode degradation,\udis the most direct reason for the failure of the whole cell/stack during OCV operation, especially for cells\udwith thinner membranes.
展开▼
