Development of Surface Coating Technology for Metallic Bipolar Hate in PEMFC : II. Study on the PEMEC Performance of Coated Metallic Bipolar Plate

PEMFC용 금속분리판 코팅 기술 개발 : II. 코팅 금속분리판 연료전지 성능 특성 연구

As the stainless steel has good corrosion resistance, mechanical property and ease of manufacture, it has been studied as the candidate material of metallic bipolar plate for automotive PIMFC. But, metal is dissolved under fuel cell operating conditions Dissolved ions contaminate a membrane electrode assembly (MEA) and, decrease the fuel cell performance. In addition, metal oxide formation on the surface of stainless steel increases the contact resistance in the fuel cell. These problems have been acted as an obstacle in the application of stainless steel to bipolar plate. Therefore, many kinds of coating technologies have been examined in order to solve these problems. In this study, stainless steel was coated in order to achieve high conductivity and corrosion resistance by several methods. Contact resistance was measured by using a tensile tester and impedance analyzer Corrosion characteristics of coated stainless steel were examined by Tafel-extrapolation method from the polarization curves in a solution simulating the anodic and cathodic environment of PEMFC. Fuel cell performance was also evaluated by single cell test. We tested various coated metal bipolar plate and conventional and graphite were also tested as comparative samples. In the result, coated stainless steel bipolar plate exhibited better cell performance than graphite to bipolar plate.