Low Cost PCB Fuel Cells Based for Small Electronic Applications

Abstract

An important aspect to enhance the introduction of the fuel cells systems in the market, is decreasing the cost of manufacturing, obtaining a flexible way to extend their use in different applications. The possibility to use the well-defined PCB manufacturing technic to develop fuel cells stacks can help to obtain a low-cost and tuneable method for their production [1]. Using this manufacturing method is easy to control the size and adjust the power requirements for different electronic devices as electrochromic devices, smartphone chargers, electric vehicles, etc. As well, due to their flat configuration is very easy to stack many of them in small spaces. In this work we design and develop a mini and micro stack DMFC open cathode PCB cell using low cost materials on the bipolar plates and electrodes. In general, for the bipolar plates different metal and ink coatings were used to improve the durability and the electrical contact. But them requires few steps to obtain the final stage, in our case we moved to a graphitic flexible material with very high corrosion resistance and conductivity giving the possibility to avoid the coating steps. In the case of the electrodes, a non-precious metal and very high poison resistance catalyst developed in our lab was used as cathode [2]. In the anode part, an inkjet printed electrodes where used. This method gives the possibility to decrease the loading of catalyst obtaining a really good performance in the Fuel Cell. For the micro-DMFC we developed two setups, one similar to the mini stack cell and the other one, in a complete passive configuration. The design of the fully passive cells gives the possibility to inject the methanol solution in the anode reservoirs. This micro stack cell was developed to power up an autonomous electrical biosensor synergistically assembled inside a passive DMFC for screening cancer biomarkers included in the European 2020 project called Symbiotic. [1] O. A. Obeisun et al., “Development of open-cathode polymer electrolyte fuel cells using printed circuit board flow-field plates: Flow geometry characterisation,” Int. J. Hydrogen Energy, vol. 39, no. 32, pp. 18326–18336, 2014. [2] D. Malko, T. Lopes, E. Symianakis, and A. R. Kucernak, “The intriguing poison tolerance of non-precious metal oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) catalysts,” J. Mater. Chem. A, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 142–152, 2016. Figure 1