study of gas diffusion electrode by using platinum nano particle and nafion/ polyaniline as a catalyst layer

There has been considerable speculation that conducting polymers would be useful catalyst support for fuel cells in few recent years. [1]. The interesting chemical behavior of the conducting polymers is due to their intrinsic redox properties, high electronic conductivity, and permeability to electroactive species [2]. Our group has done the pioneering studies that are introduction of polyaniline in gas diffusion electrodes [3].The presence of PANI instead of Nafion increases current density, catalyst utilization and reduces the polarization resistance of the GDE due to the electronic conductivity of PANI and proton conductivity [4]. In another study a gas diffusion electrode with a catalyst layer containing a mixture of Nafion and PANI nanofiber was prepared. The resulting GDE had good mechanical properties and acceptable electrochemical activity [5]. In this work we investigated GDEs which have different mole ratios of Nafion and PANI in their structure to find an optimal point for PANI–Nafion combination for oxygen reduction reaction.