A review on durability of key components of PEM fuel cells

Proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) are considered to be a clean energy technology to replace conventional internal combustion engines in automobiles. PEMFCs undergo a complex degradation involving multiple dimensions, materials, and factors. This review focuses on the decay of key materials of PEMFCs after durability tests longer than 2000 hours, providing an in-depth look at degradation behaviors at the material and component levels. The H₂-crossover current, ohmic resistance, kinetics current and the limiting current were thus identified as core primary factors from the perspective of performance and stability. Besides, the critical aging factors of key components were defined as where significant numerical changes occur during the aging process, causing any one or more of the four core primary factors to change by more than 10% in physical or chemical parameters.