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;