Graphene oxide reinforced ultra-thin carbon paper used for fuel cells and the mechanisms of reinforcement

Ultra-thin carbon paper (CP) has attracted considerable interest for pursuing miniaturization and high-flux for fuel cells. This paper reports an ultra-thin CP (0.11 mm) fabrication process for proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). Graphene oxide (GO) was dispersed in the phenolic resin (PF) impregnant, and later was coated on the carbon fiber (CF) in order to improve the performance of the resulting CP. The results demonstrated that compared with the CP, the GO-modified CP exhibited the increasing of carbon yield and crystallinity of matrix carbon, improving of tensile strength and electrical conductivity because of the more covalent bond (CO and CO) formed between the PF (GO) and carbon fiber. Meantime, the porosity and permeability of CP decreased with the increasing of GO in impregnant. The contact angle of GO-modified CP was slightly larger than CP. In all the CP with 1 wt% GO had superior properties (The tensile strength reached 31 MPa and the electrical resistivity decreased to 2.1 mΩ cm).