Design and fabrication of light weight current collectors for direct methanol fuel cells using the micro-electro mechanical system technique

The direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) is suitable for portable applications. Therefore, a light weight and small size is desirable. The main objective of this paper is to design and fabricate a light weight current collector for DMFC usage. The light weight current collector mainly consists of a substrate with two thin film metal layers. The substrate of the current collector is an FR4 epoxy plate. The thin film metal layers are accomplished by the thermo coater technique to coat metal powders onto the substrate surfaces. The developed light weight current collectors are further assembled to a single cell DMFC test fixture to measure the cell performance. The results show that the proposed current collectors could even be applied to DMFCs because they are light, thin and low cost and have potential for mass production.

► Develop a light weight current collector of the direct methanol fuel cell using thermal evaporation technique. ► The light weight current collector mainly consists of a substrate with two thin film metal layers. ► The substrate of the current collector is an FR4 epoxy plate. ► The substrate is coated with an electric conduction layer and a corrosion resistance layer via metal thermal evaporations.