A Study on the Fabrication of Metallic Bipolar Plate for Subminiature Fuel Cell Using Powder Injection Molding Process

Abstract

Subminiature fuel cell is a representative eco-friendly power source which possesses the merits of having the potential of being implemented in portable electronic devices and other subminiature devices, as well as having high energy density as compared to existing secondary cells. The size of the bipolar plate which is implemented in a subminiature fuel cell should be of a small size according to the size of the fuel cell, and the flow channel inside the bipolar plate also has be reduced to match the overall size of the bipolar plate. Therefore, a higher level of difficulty in the manufacturing process is involved in producing bipolar plate for subminiature fuel cells and mass production is extremely difficult. In this study, powder injection molding was applied to the production of subminiature metal bipolar plate to verify the possibility of mass production. For that, a bipolar plate and mold were designed and then a test injection forming was carried out. This was attempted to validate the feasibility of a subminiature metallic bipolar plate prepared through a debinding and sintering process by evaluating its electric conductivity and density.