A micro-direct methanol fuel cell stack with optimized design and microfabrication

This paper presents a micro direct methanol fuel cell (μDMFC) stack with the advantages of compact structure and simple fuel delivery. The μDMFC stack consists of two μDMFC cells stacked one by one with the anode plate shared. The dimensions of the flow channels are optimized by modeling and simulation. Microfabrication and PDMS assembly are used to implement the μDMFC stack. Experiment results show that the μDMFC stack generates a power density of 12.71 mW/cm2, 39.3% higher than that of a μDMFC cell, at the cost of only 23% increase in volume.