ORIGINAL PAPER Fabrication of gas diffusion electrode via Pt electrodeposition on cathodic oxidized carbon paper as the anode for high-temperature polymer membrane fuel cell in the presence of CO Neda Afsham 1 & Narges Fallah 1 & Bahram Nassernejad 1 & Mehran Javanbakht 2 & Zeinab Jabbari 1 Received: 5 September 2018 /Revised: 4 February 2019 /Accepted: 17 February 2019 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019 Abstract The platinum nanoparticles were grown directly by electrodeposition process on electrochemically oxidized carbon paper (CP) and non-oxidized CP as the anode gas diffusion electrodes (GDEs) for the application in ABPBI-based high-temperature polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (HT-PEMFC). XRD, SEM, and CO stripping in the range of 40 to 120 ° C were used to investigate the prepared GDEs. Results show that cathodic oxidation of CP has an effect on the CO tolerance of the anode GDE. This enhancement appears to originate from the functional oxygen groups on oxidized CP. Fuel cell results, operating with pure hydrogen at 140 ° C, show 230 mW/cm 2 and 160 mW/cm 2 maximum power densities for cathodic oxidized and non-oxidized GDEs, respectively. It was also found that poisoning by 3% CO for cathodic oxidized electrode at 140 ° C display an enhancement in the performance compared with non-oxidized electrode, so cathodic oxidized GDE could be an interesting anode for HT- PEMFCs. Keywords Cathodic oxidation . Electrodeposition . Anode CO tolerance . Oxygen functional groups . High-temperature fuel cell Introduction Fuel cells as alternative power plants have gained increased attention because of disadvantages of fossil fuels in terms of environmental effects and ending resource [1]. However, chal- lenges facing the wide commercialization of proton-exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) are as follows: (1) improving catalyst tolerance to impurities such as CO; (2) simplifying water and heat management; (3) enhancing the kinetics of the reactions at electrodes; (4) reducing the costs of materials and manufacturing process. Recent research has focused on fixing most of these problems by increasing the operating temperature of PEMFCs resulting in so-called high-tempera- ture PEMFCs (HT-PEMFCs) [2]. The key component of PEMFCs is the membrane- electrode assembly (MEA), which is composed of a polymer electrolyte membrane, anode and cathode catalyst layers (CLs), and gas diffusion layers (GDLs). The CL consists of electrocatalyst and binder. The most commonly used catalyst for fuel cell is still platinum or based on platinum [3], so, lowering Pt loadings in the catalyst layer is becoming one of the most important issues for PEMFCs. It is a further chal- lenge for HT-PEMFC when PA doped membrane is used since liquid PA in the CLs could make the gas transport difficulties, and phosphate anion adsorption on the platinum catalyst im- pede the electrode reactions [4]. Although the hydrogen oxi- dation needs less, Pt loading in the anode compared with the oxygen reduction in the cathode electrode in HT-PEM fuel cells, the adsorption of phosphoric acid species on the anodic electrode, should be considered [5]. In addition, despite the fact that HT-PEMFCs are tolerant to CO poisoning, under reformate conditions, the performance of the anode is severely affected. As a result, fabricating the proper anode for HT- PEMFC with low Pt in the presence of CO is important. Most of the R&D in HT-MEAs is focused on the develop- ment of the polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) [6, 7]; how- ever, efforts are also being made to develop suitable GDEs [8]. * Narges Fallah nfallah2001@aut.ac.ir 1 Department of Chemical Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran 2 Department of Chemistry, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran Ionics https://doi.org/10.1007/s11581-019-02931-8