A possible method to improve membrane humidity conditions in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells and, therefore, the cell performance is the optimization of microporous layer MPL structures. In this work, water transport in modified MPL materials in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells PEMFCs was investigated by in amp; 8197;operando synchrotron X ray tomography. Three different types of MPLs are compared A reference standard MPL material, an MPL material with a special wavy structure, and an MPL with randomly distributed holes. We found a strong impact of the modified MPL structure on the water distribution at operating temperatures of 40 and 55 amp; 8201; C and an increase of cell performance up to 14 amp; 8201; compared to the reference cell. We assume the water distribution at the membrane to be responsible for the performance increase and provide a detailed discussion.
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