Experimental Methods for Quantifying the Activity of Platinum Electrocatalysts for the Oxygen Reduction Reaction

A tutorial is provided for methods to accurately and reproducibly determine the activity of Pt-based electrocatalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction in proton exchange membrane fuel cells and other applications. The impact of various experimental parameters on electrocatalyst activity is demonstrated, and explicit experimental procedures and measurement protocols are given for comparison of electrocatalyst activity to fuel cell standards. (To listen to a podcast about this article, please go to the Analytical Chemistry multimedia page at pubs.acs.org/page/ancham/audio/index.html.)