• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.161-166
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• 2008

The multi-films of a metallic film and a transparent conducting oxide (TCO, indium-tin oxide, ITO) film were formed on the stainless steel 316 and 304 plates by a sputtering method and an E-beam method and then the external metallic region of the stainless steel bipolar plates was converted into the metal nitride films through an annealing process. The multi-film formed on the stainless steel bipolar plates showed the XRD patterns of the typical indium-tin oxide, the metallic phase and the metal substrate and the external nitride film. The XRD pattern of the thin film on the bipolar plates modified showed two metal nitride phases of CrN and $Cr_2N$ compound. Surface microstructural morphology of the multi-film deposited bipolar plates was observed by AFM and FE-SEM. The metal nitride film formed on the stainless steel bipolar plates represented a microstructural morphology of fine columnar grains with 10 nm diameter and 60nm length in FE-SEM images. The electrical resistivity of the stainless steel bipolar plates modified was evaluated.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.331-334
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• 2009

Currently, the bipolar plates are fabricated mainly from graphite materials. However, metal bipolar plate are getting most attractive due to their good feasibility of mass production and low cost. In this study, metal bipolar plates for fuel cell Vehicles were developed with a concept based on the straight flow patterns to minimize the pressure drop and spring back. And molded gasket apply to the bipolar plate for improve sealing performance. Results show that the metal bipolar plate have a high potential to replace for graphite materials in fuel cell application.

• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
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• 2008.06a
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• pp.646-648
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• 2008

The multi-films of a metallic film and a transparent conducting oxide (TCO, indium-tin oxide, ITO) film were formed on the stainless steel 316 and 304 plates by a sputtering method and an E-beam method and then the external metallic region of the stainless steel bipolar plates was converted into the metal nitride films through an annealing process. The multi-film formed on the stainless steel bipolar plates showed the XRD patterns of the typical indium-tin oxide, the metallic phase and the metal substrate and the external nitride film. The XRD pattern of the thin film on the bipolar plates modified showed two metal nitride phases of CrN and $Cr_2N$ compound. Surface microstructural morphology of the multi-film deposited bipolar plates was observed by AFM and FE-SEM. The electrical resistivity of the stainless steel bipolar plates modified was evaluated.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.554-559
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• 2015

Single cell of PEMFC (polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell) is composed of bipolar plates, gasket, GDL and the MEA. Bipolar plate's function is the collecting electricity, helping oxygen/hydrogen gas diffuse evenly and draining the water and heat. In this work, we have conducted experiments to low contact resistance and improve the performance of a $25cm^2$ single cell by using metal forms. We have following experimental cases: 1) Conventional graphite serpentine channel bipolar plate; 2) Channel-less bipolar plate with nickel(Ni) based metal foam which coated by various materials. We focused the difference in contact resistance and performance of the single cell with metal foam depending on various coating materials. The experimental results show the similar performance of single cells between with serpentine channel bipolar plates and with channel-less bipolar plate using metal foams. In addition, single cell with metal foam shows potential to higher performance than conventional channel.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2010.11a
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• pp.90.2-90.2
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• 2010

The coated metallic bipolar plates are getting attractive due to their good feasibility of mass production, low contact resistance, high electrical/thermal conductivity, low gas permeability and good mechanical strength comparing with graphite materials. Yet, metallic bipolar plates for polymer electrolyte membrane(PEM) fuel cells typically require coatings for corrosion protection. Other requirements for the corrosion protective coatings include low electrical contact resistance between metallic bipolar plate and gas diffusion layer, good mechanical robustness, low mechanical and fabrication cost. The authors have evaluated a number of protective coatings deposited on stainless steel substrate by electroplating. The coated metallic bipolar plates are investigated with an electrochemical polarization tests, salt dipping tests, adhesion tests for corrosion resistance and then the contact resistance was measured. The results showed that the selective samples electroplated with optimized method, satisfied the DOE target for corrosion resistance and contact resistance, and also were very stabilized in the typical fuel cell environments in the long-term.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.313-320
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• 2002

The characteristics of the AISI bipolar plates have been investigated to replace the expensive graphite bipolar plates. It was found from the contact resistance evaluation of graphites, composites, and AISI that the contact resistance of AISI was the lowest, but it could approach to that of composites at higher compression forces. The single cell operation using the AISI bipolar plates revealed that the lower performance of the AISI single cell compared to the graphite one was due to not only the higher contact resistance but the flooding effect caused by high wettability of AISI. The performance of the AISI single cell could be improved if the channels were modified appropriately. The large size AISI single cell was operated to investigated the size effect on the performance.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.65-71
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• 2014

As an important component of a fuel cell, the bipolar plate comprises a large proportion in the fuel cell's volume, weight and price. The bipolar plate is the most widely used; however, graphite bipolar plate is large in volume, brittle and therefore easily broken during assembling. In addition, due to its poor machinability, production costs a lot, unless mass production. Compared with the graphite bipolar plate, the metal bipolar plate has good machinability, high electric conductivity and strong mechanical strength; however, it corrodes easily and has a high contact resistance, so in order to prevent corrosion and reduce the contact resistance, the basic metal needs to be processed by use of electro polishing and coating. The water which is produced by electrochemical reactions in the fuel cell must be discharged smoothly. In this study, in order to prevent corrosion the processes of electro polishing and CrN coating were used. According to the presence or absence of these processes, the contact angles can be measured and different metal bipolar plates can be made, these plates can be used for comparing and analyzing the performance of the fuel cell.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.492-501
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• 2017

A 900 W scale direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) stack is designed and fabricated for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) applications. To meet the volume and weight requirements, metallic bipolar plates are applied to the DMFC stack for the first time wherein POS470FC was chosen as bipolar plate material. To ensure good robustness of the metallic bipolar plate based DMFC stack, finite element method based simulations are conducted using a commercial ANSYS Fluent software. The stress buildup and deformation characteristics on bipolar plates and end plates are analyzed in details. The present DMFC stack exhibits the performance of 1,130 W at 32 V and 35.3 A, clearly demonstrating that it could successfully operate for UAVs requiring around 1,000 W of power.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2009.11a
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• pp.289-292
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• 2009

The fabrication method of glass bipolar plates for micro PEM fuel cell application has been established and performance evaluation has been carried out. The advantages of glass bipolar plates for micro PEM fuel cells are light weight, high chemical resistivity, and easy manufacture. The MEMS fabrication process of anisotropic wet etching, thermal & UV bonding along with metal layer deposition has been introduced. From performance evaluation, it was shown that the micro fuel cell with a metal layer deposited on the reactive area yielded higher power density than the one without it. But both power densities of the two cases showed out to be adequate with the current status of micro fuel cell technology.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.5 no.5
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• pp.204-207
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• 2004

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.