Cell voltage reversal resulted from hydrogen starvation at the anode is one of the factors that exacerbate the overall degradation of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). An effective mitigation strategy is to involve oxygen evolution reaction (OER) catalysts into the anode to facilitate water electrolysis against carbon corrosion. As such, this paper aims to study the influence of relative humidity (RH) on the performance and durability of reversal-tolerant-anodes (RTAs) during hydrogen starvation. An advanced segmented technique is employed to examine the coupling reactions by simultaneously measuring current density, RH and temperature in a fuel cell with a large active area. It is found that the inlet of RTAs undergoes degradation earlier than the outlet and the membrane electrode assembly (MEA) with a RTA has an optimal humidity during cell reversal. Results also show that the failure of the RTA MEA is due to a loss of electron conduction medium rather than the deactivation of the OER catalyst. In addition, this work highlights the importance of plate flow field design and the OER catalyst gradient design of the RTA MEA.

由阳极处的氢缺乏引起的电池电压反转是加剧质子交换膜燃料电池（PEMFC）整体降解的因素之一。一种有效的缓解策略是使氧气析出反应（OER）催化剂进入阳极，以促进水电解以防止碳腐蚀。因此，本文旨在研究相对湿度（RH）对氢饥饿期间耐逆阳极（RTA）的性能和耐久性的影响。先进的分段技术用于通过同时测量具有大有效面积的燃料电池中的电流密度，RH和温度来检查偶联反应。发现RTA的入口比出口更早地发生降解，并且具有RTA的膜电极组件（MEA）在细胞反转期间具有最佳湿度。结果还表明，RTA MEA的失败是由于电子传导介质的损失，而不是由于OER催化剂的失活。此外，这项工作突出了RTA MEA的板式流场设计和OER催化剂梯度设计的重要性。