be a different solvent one or more solvents can be mixed with the ionomer as desired the mixture of the exfoliated clay reinforcement solvent one or more ionomer and catalyst is generally ball milled to obtain the electrode ink the electrode ink typically contains about 0 5 to about 6 wt clay reinforcement based on the total solids where total solids includes solid ionomer catalyst and clay reinforcement and any additional solid materials if present or about 0 5 to about 5 wt or 0 5 to about 4 wt or 0 5 to about 3 wt or 0 5 to about 2 wt or 0 5 to about 1 wt it is desirable to use the smallest amount of reinforcement that will produce a substantially mud crack free electrode the electrode ink can be deposited on any suitable substrate including but not limited to gdm pem or a decal substrate catalyst based inks were produced which contained solvent water ionomer and platinum containing catalyst exfoliated purified clay was added to the ink using conventional coating techniques such as slot die coating the ink was applied to the gdm and dried the resulting cathode was combined with the counter electrode and membrane to form an mea 34 9 g n propyl alcohol 9 0 g water and 0 11 g nanoclay cloisite 10 a available from southern clay products of gonzales tex purified as described above were weighed and placed in a container the mixture was homogenized for 10 min to break up large agglomerates and transferred.