The Electrical Properties of Aluminum Bipolar Plate for PEM Fuel Cell System

In this work, we present the electrochemical properties of Al bipolar plate, which can be re-searched for the application of PEMFC system. Bulk resistance of the plate was measured with a four-point probe method. The electrical conductivity of noble metal coated Al plate was 4.40 x 10$^4$ S/cm. On the other hand, the electrical interfacial resistance of the noble metal coated Al plate valued at 0.15 mΩ-$\textrm{cm}^2$ and that of graphite was 0.26 mΩ-$\textrm{cm}^2$ under the holding pressure of 140 N/$\textrm{cm}^2$ at the applied current of 5 A. And the performance of Al bipolar plate for PEMFC was evaluated at various conditions. The single cell performance was more than 0.43 W/$\textrm{cm}^2$ (0.47 Wig) for noble metal coated Al bipolar plate at 5$0^{\circ}C$ under atmospheric pressure in external humidified hydrogen and oxygen condition. As the present results, we could show the results that the noble metal coated Al bipolar plates were favorable in the aspect of electrical properties compared with those of the commercialized resin-impregnated graphite plates.