Through over a decade continuous research and development all over the world, the performances of proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) for automobile application, such as energy efficiency, power density and specific power of the stack, and the system with low-temperature startup, have achieved breakthrough progress. A new round of fuel cell automobile commercialization now has been approaching. However, the durability of the automobile PEMFC systems, which include massive scale of problems, hasnt met the commercialization target. The durability is the primary problem of vehicle fuel cell commercialization and become the ultimate obstacle of the fuel cell industrialization in the field of automobile application. The problem of durability for automobile PEMFC application has attracted lots of attention worldwide. In this paper, the degradation mechanics of key materials and components in the PEMFC, including catalyst, support material, proton exchange membrane, ionomer in catalyst layer, gas diffusion layer and metal bipolar plate, have been summarized and analyzed in detail. Meanwhile the mitigation strategies for the degradations are also summarized and some novel strategies for durability mitigation are proposed. This paper is instructive for the understanding and promotion of the durability for the PEMFC.

Contents
1 Introduction
2 The degradation of proton exchange membrane fuel cell
2.1 The degradation mechanism of Pt catalyst
2.2 The degradation mechanism of carbon support for catalyst
2.3 The degradation of proton exchange membrane and electrode ionomer
2.4 The degradation of gas diffusion layer
2.5 The degradation of metal bipolar plate
3 The mitigation strategy for degradation
3.1 The mitigation of Pt degradation
3.2 The mitigation of carbon degradation
3.3 The mitigation of proton exchange membrane degradation
3.4 The mitigation of gas diffusion layer degradation
3.5 The mitigation of bipolar plate degradation
4 Conclusion