(Invited) High-Throughput, In-line Quality Control of Fuel Cell Materials

Abstract

Electrochemical energy conversion technologies are actively being commercialized for large-scale applications, such as zero-pollution automotive systems. There has been significant progress in pioneering research, such as the discovery and development of new membranes, catalysts, gas diffusion layers, membrane electrode assemblies, and operating conditions. These technologies need to make the jump from laboratory research-scale to robust production-scale. In many cases, scale up requires compromises on materials, methodology, and quality control of each component. Current manufacturing practices generally rely heavily on manual, visual inspection of individual components followed by cell testing to indicate material issues, which leads to delayed correction of production issues and added cost in the form of additional labor and expensive material loss. Reducing the extent of the manual labor and compromises during scale up requires addition and integration of in-line, real-time, quality control systems that provide feedback for process correction.Mainstream Engineering has developed, built and evaluated an in-line optical scanner based inspection system with the capability to determine membrane thickness, identify defects, and measure catalyst variability and loading. The inspection system samples the entire surface so that defects in the materials can be identified and selectively removed prior to assembly. We have worked with our partners to characterize a wide range of membranes and catalysts types using off-line techniques including x-ray fluorescence, ion-coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, and IR thermography to identify defects and their impact on cell performance. This data was then used to build calibrations and develop in-line, automated detection algorithms that can be used during full-scale production of materials, to quantify and isolate defects at multiple stages of the production process. We have used our in-line system to characterize a variety of materials including proton exchange membrane, anion exchange membrane, fluorinated and hydrocarbon membranes, catalyst coated membranes, gas diffusion layers, and gas diffusion electrodes in a variety of configurations and chemistries. This process can be rapidly adapted and applied to new materials and processing approaches as they are developed in the future order to help reduce development time in, and transition from research to production systems, as well as providing high-throughput, real-time diagnostic capability for commercial applications.