Anion exchange membrane fuel cells (AEMFC) are a promising technology to allow the application of non-precious metal catalysts. While many of such catalysts have been identified in numerous recent fundamental research studies, reports evaluating these catalysts in realistic AEMFC catalyst layers together with stability assessments are rare. In the present work we show that fast and reliable evaluation and optimization of Fe-N-C-based oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) catalyst layers can be achieved using a gas diffusion electrode (GDE) half-cell approach. To set a benchmark in such measurements, a commercial Pajarito Powder Fe-N-C catalyst and commercial Aemion^TM ionomer are used. It is demonstrated that the ORR performance can be increased significantly by fine-tuning of the ionomer activation time. Furthermore, the optimized Fe-N-C-based catalyst layer shows very high stability with no observable performance deterioration after 5000 cycles in the 0.6–1.0 V vs. RHE potential window.

阴离子交换膜燃料电池（AEMFC）是允许应用非贵金属催化剂的有前途的技术。尽管在许多近期基础研究中已经发现了许多此类催化剂，但很少有人在实际的AEMFC催化剂层中评估这些催化剂以及进行稳定性评估的报道。在目前的工作中，我们表明使用气体扩散电极（GDE）半电池方法可以实现基于Fe-NC的氧还原反应（ORR）催化剂层的快速，可靠的评估和优化。为了在此类测量中设定基准，需要使用商用Pajarito Powder Fe-NC催化剂和商用Aemion ^TM使用离聚物。已经证明，通过微调离聚物活化时间可以显着提高ORR性能。此外，经过优化的基于Fe-NC的催化剂层在0.6–1.0 V vs. RHE电位窗口中经过5000次循环后，显示出很高的稳定性，并且没有可观察到的性能下降。