Abstract
We present two simple methods, with parallel and serial gas flows, for the stacking of microfabricated silicon fuel cells with integrated current collectors, flow fields and gas diffusion layers. The gas diffusion layer is implemented using black silicon. In the two stacking methods proposed in this work, the fluidic apertures and gas flow topology are rotationally symmetric and enable us to stack fuel cells without an increase in the number of electrical or fluidic ports or interconnects. Thanks to this simplicity and the structural compactness of each cell, the obtained stacks are very thin (~1.6 mm for a two-cell stack). We have fabricated two-cell stacks with two different gas flow topologies and obtained an open-circuit voltage (OCV) of 1.6 V and a power density of 63 mW·cm−2, proving the viability of the design.
Highlights
Fuel cells have been traditionally used for stationary power generation or in electrical vehicles, but miniaturized micro fuel cells have been, more recently, researched as a viable alternative to rechargeable batteries for applications, such as mobile phones, MP3 players, camcorders, etc., due to the potentially higher energy density [1,2]
The last step in fabricating a flow field body is deposition of a thin layer of chromium or platinum on the black silicon gas diffusion layer (GDL). The function of this metal layer is to protect the black silicon from oxidation, which would deteriorate the performance of the fuel cell
We have demonstrated a straight-forward method for obtaining vertical micro FC stacks
Summary
Fuel cells have been traditionally used for stationary power generation or in electrical vehicles, but miniaturized micro fuel cells (micro FC) have been, more recently, researched as a viable alternative to rechargeable batteries for applications, such as mobile phones, MP3 players, camcorders, etc., due to the potentially higher energy density [1,2]. In [15], an attempt was made to reduce this overhead, by having a shared anode plate, where a single methanol channel serves as the flow field for two cathodes, whereas in [14], the simplicity is a consequence of using a single-chamber configuration, where both the cathode and the anode are placed in the same container with fuel and oxidant These designs are restricted to two cells per stack. No such restriction in the number of stacked cells exists for the devices described in [16,17] These micro FC stacks use a configuration known as “bipolar plates”, where the flow field plates are conductive and stacked in such a way as to add to the voltage of the cells. A two-cell stack produces 1.6 V of open-circuit voltage (OCV), about double the single hydrogen-fueled cell OCV
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