연료전지 촉매층 내 촉매활성도에 대한 탄소지지 백금 촉매의 기하학적 비등방성 효과에 관한 연구

Abstract

Transport phenomena of reactant and product are directly linked to intrinsic inhomogeneous random configurations of catalyst layer (CL) that consist of ionomer, carbon-supported catalyst (Pt/C), and pores. Hence, electrochemically active surface area (ECSA) of Pt/C is dominated by geometrical morphology of mass transport path. Undoubtedly these ECSAs are key factor of total fuel cell efficiency. In this study, non-deterministic micro-scale CLs were randomly generated by Monte Carlo method and implemented with the percolation process. To ensure valid inference about Pt/C catalyst utilization, 600 samples were chosen as the number of necessary samples with 95% confidence level. Statistic results of 600 samples generated under particular condition (20vol% Pt/C, 30vol% ionomer, 50vol% pore, and 20nm particle diameter) reveal only 18.2%~81.0% of Pt/C can construct ECSAs with mean value of 53.8%. This study indicates that the catalyst utilization in fuel cell CLs cannot be identical notwithstanding the same design condition.