Ex situ evaluation of nanometer range gold coating on stainless steel substrate for automotive polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell bipolar plate

The bipolar plate in polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell helps to feed reactant gases to the membrane electrode assembly (MEA) and collect current from the MEA. To facilitate these functions, the bipolar plate material should exhibit excellent electrical conductivity and corrosion resistance under fuel cell operating conditions, and simultaneously be of low-cost to meet commercialization enabling targets for automotive fuel cells. In the present work, we focus on the benchmarking of 10 nm gold coated SS316L (a.k.a. Au Nanoclad®) bipolar plate material through ex situ tests, which is provided by Daido Steel (Japan). The use of nanometer range Au coatings help to retain the noble properties of gold while significantly reducing the cost of the bipolar plate. The area specific resistance of the flat sample is 0.9 mΩ cm2 while that for the formed bipolar plate is 6.3 mΩ cm2 at compaction force of 60 N cm−2. The corrosion current density was less than 1 μA cm−2 at 0.8 V/NHE with air sparge simulating cathodic conditions. Additionally, gold coated SS316L showed anodic passivation of SS316L, thereby exhibiting robustness towards coating defects including surface scratches that may originate during the manufacturing of the bipolar plate. These series of ex situ tests indicate that 10 nm gold coated SS316L has good potential to be considered for commercial bipolar plates in automotive fuel cell stack.