A fully spray-coated fuel cell membrane electrode assembly using Aquivion ionomer with a graphene oxide/cerium oxide interlayer

Breitwieser, Matthias and Bayer, Thomas and Büchler, Andreas and Zengerle, Roland and Lyth, Stephen M. and Thiele, Simon (2017) A fully spray-coated fuel cell membrane electrode assembly using Aquivion ionomer with a graphene oxide/cerium oxide interlayer. Journal of Power Sources, 351. pp. 145-150. ISSN 0378-7753 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpowsour.2017.03.085)

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Abstract

A novel multilayer membrane electrode assembly (MEA) for polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) is fabricated in this work, within a single spray-coating device. For the first time, direct membrane deposition is used to fabricate a PEMFC by spraying the short-side-chain ionomer Aquivion directly onto the gas diffusion electrodes. The fully sprayed MEA, with an Aquivion membrane 10 μm in thickness, achieved a high power density of 1.6 W/cm2 for H2/air operation at 300 kPaabs. This is one of the highest reported values for thin composite membranes operated in H2/air atmosphere. By the means of confocal laser scanning microscopy, individual carbon fibers from the gas diffusion layer are identified to penetrate through the micro porous layer (MPL), likely causing a low electrical cell resistance in the range of 150 Ω cm2 through the thin sprayed membranes. By spraying a 200 nm graphene oxide/cerium oxide (GO/CeO2) interlayer between two layers of Aquivion ionomer, the impact of the electrical short is eliminated and the hydrogen crossover current density is reduced to about 1 mA/cm2. The peak power density of the interlayer-containing MEA drops only by 10% compared to a pure Aquivion membrane of similar thickness.

ORCID iDs

Breitwieser, Matthias, Bayer, Thomas, Büchler, Andreas, Zengerle, Roland, Lyth, Stephen M. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9563-867X and Thiele, Simon;
  • Item type:Article
    ID code:85390
    Dates:
    Date
    Event
    31 May 2017
    Published
    27 March 2017
    Published Online
    20 March 2017
    Accepted
    23 January 2017
    Submitted
    Notes:Funding Information: M.B. gratefully thanks the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) for funding this project within a Postdoctoral Fellowship for overseas researchers at Kyushu University (Fukuoka, Japan) S.M.L. and T.B. are grateful for support from the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) through its “Center of Innovation Science and Technology based Radical Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program (COI Program)”. The International Institute for Carbon-Neutral Energy Research (WPI-I2CNER) is supported by the World Premier International Research Center Initiative (WPI), MEXT, Japan. Publisher Copyright: © 2017 Elsevier B.V. Matthias Breitwieser, Thomas Bayer, Andreas Büchler, Roland Zengerle, Stephen M. Lyth, Simon Thiele, A fully spray-coated fuel cell membrane electrode assembly using Aquivion ionomer with a graphene oxide/cerium oxide interlayer, Journal of Power Sources, Volume 351, 2017, Pages 145-150, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpowsour.2017.03.085
    Subjects:Science > Chemistry
    Department:Faculty of Engineering > Chemical and Process Engineering
    Depositing user: Pure Administrator
    Date deposited:04 May 2023 10:13
    Last modified:15 Nov 2024 06:37
    Related URLs:
    URI:https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/id/eprint/85390
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