In this study, 304 stainless steel (SS) bipolar plates are fabricated by flexible forming process and an amorphous carbon (a-C) film is coated by closed field unbalanced magnetron sputter ion plating (CFUBMSIP). The interfacial contact resistance (ICR), in-plane conductivity and surface energy of the a-C coated 304SS samples are investigated. The initial performance of the single cell with a-C coated bipolar plates is 923.9 mW cm−2 at a cell voltage of 0.6 V, and the peak power density is 1150.6 mW cm−2 at a current density of 2573.2 mA cm−2. Performance comparison experiments between a-C coated and bare 304SS bipolar plates show that the single cell performance is greatly improved by the a-C coating. Lifetime test of the single cell over 200 h and contamination analysis of the tested membrane electrode assemble (MEA) indicate that the a-C coating has excellent chemical stability. A 100 W-class proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) short stack with a-C coated bipolar plates is assembled and shows exciting initial performance. The stack also exhibits uniform voltage distribution, good short-term lifetime performance, and high volumetric power density and specific power. Therefore, a-C coated 304SS bipolar plates may be practically applied for commercialization of PEMFC technology. 相似文献
Cost reduction for fuel cell stainless steel bipolar plate (BPP)’s Au-coating requires in depth understanding of its corrosion behavior. To this end, this paper explores the degradation of the tensile properties of an Au-coated 316L stainless steel bipolar plate in a real fuel cell stack. 4 BPPs were randomly chosen and removed from a stack that had run for 1600 h and, along with 2 pristine BPPs, were subsequently tested for surface morphology and tensile properties. Results suggest that (1) Pristine BPPs have initial pinhole flaws on the surface, whereas corroded BPPs have punctate (on O2 side) and continual (on H2 side) corrosions. (2) The tensile ultimate elongation for a BPP significantly decreases after corrosion on both O2 and H2 sides. (3) The degradation of tensile properties is attributed to primary cell effect.