Effective reaction rates of a thin catalyst layer

The catalyst layer in a fuel cell can be described with a system of reaction diffusion eq uations for the oxygen concentration and the protonic overpotential. The Tafel law gives an exponential expression for the reaction rate, and the Tafel slope is a coefficient in this law. We present a rigorous thin layer analysis for two reaction regimes. In the case of thin catalyst layers and bounded potentials, the original Tafel law enters as an effective boundary condition. Instead, in the case of large protonic overpotentials, we derive an exponential law that contains the doubled Tafel slope. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.