Laser additive manufacturing of stainless steel micro fuel cells

•First ever stainless steel micro fuel cells made by laser additive manufacturing.•Maximum current density: 1.19 A cm−2, maximum power density: 238 mW cm−2.•The results are comparable to those of macro fuel cells.•We demonstrated that the method is suitable for fast prototyping.•The method was used to test flowfield aspect ratio modifications.

This paper introduces laser additive manufacturing as a new method for the fabrication of micro fuel cells: The method opens up the capability of ultrafast prototyping, as the whole device can be produced at once, starting from a digital 3D model. In fact, many different devices can be produced at once, which is useful for the comparison of competing designs. The micro fuel cells are made of stainless steel, so they are very robust, thermally and chemically inert and long-lasting. This enables the researcher to perform a large number of experiments on the same cell without physical or chemical degradation. To demonstrate the validity of our method, we have produced three versions of a micro fuel cell with square pillar flowfield. All three have produced high current and power density, with maximum values of 1.2 A cm−2 for the current and 238 mW cm−2 for power.

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