The loss in performance during fuel cell operation is one of the critical factors that hamper fuel cells commercialization. This paper presents a research activity related to high temperature polymer electrode membrane fuel cell (HT-PEMFC) degradation. The aim of the study is to investigate catalyst degradation of membrane electrode assemblies (MEAs) subjected to load cycles. Two HT-PEM MEAs have been subjected to accelerated ageing tests based on load cycling. The cycles profile has been chosen in order to enhance catalyst degradation. Both the tests show a fuel cell performance loss lower than 30mV after 100,000 cycles at 600mAcm–2. In order to analyze the catalyst evolution, synchrotron small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) has been employed. The catalyst degradation of the two conditioned samples has been compared with the data obtained from a new MEA that has been used as reference sample. The SAXS results showed a mean size increase of the platinum nanoparticles up to the 100%.
