The air-breathing proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is of great interest in mobile power sources because of its simple system design and low parasitic power consumption. Different from previous low-temperature air-breathing PEMFCs, a high-temperature PEMFC with a phosphoric acid doped polybenzimidazole (PBI) membrane as the polymer electrolyte is designed and investigated under air-breathing conditions. The preliminary results show that a peak power density of 220.5 mW cm(-2) at 200 degrees C can be achieved without employing any water managements, which is comparable to those with conventional Nafion (R) membranes operated at low temperatures. In addition, it is found that with the present cell design, the limiting current density arising from the oxygen transfer limitation is around 700 mA cm(-2) even at 200 degrees C. The short-term durability test at 200 mA cm(-2) and 180 degrees C reveals that all the cells exhibit a gradual decrease in the voltage along with a rise in the internal resistance. The degradation rate of continuous operation is around 58.32 mu V h(-1), which is much smaller than those of start/stop cycling operations. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.