Fabrication of High Precision PEMFC Membrane Electrode Assemblies by Sieve Printing Method

Abstract

A sieve printing technique has been developed for the preparation of gas diffusion electrodes for proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). The results of the preparation of membrane electrode assemblies (MEAs) are shown to be faster and highly reproducible by using the sieve printing and hot pressing method. These results were compared with those obtained by spray and hot pressing method. The experiments were carried out in a 25 cm2 single PEM fuel cell with platinum loadings of 0.4 mg Pt cm−2 and 0.6 mg Pt cm−2 on the anode and cathode, respectively. Scanning electron microscopy analysis was used to investigate the electrodes’ morphology. The performance of the MEAs was measured by polarization curves. It was observed that the sieve printing technique is highly reproducible and significantly more accurate and faster than the spray one. Sieve printing technique can be easily scaled up and is very adequate for high volume production with low-cost. Such features allow manufacturing large active areas for power stack fabrication. In addition, this deposition technique has produced MEAs with a 39.8% higher power density at 0.6 V when compared with the spray one.