Fabrication and test of an air-breathing microfluidic fuel cell

Abstract

An air-breathing direct formic acid microfluidic fuel cell, which had a self-made anode electrode of 10 mg/cm2 Pd loading and 6 mg/cm2 Nafion content, was fabricated and tested. The microfluidic fuel cell was achieved by bonding a PDMS microchannel that was fabricated by a soft-lithography process and a PMMA sheet that was machined by a CO2 laser for obtaining 50 through holes of 0.5 mm in diameter. Formic acid of 0.3 M, 0.5 M, and 1.0 M, mixed with 0.5-M H2SO4, was supplied at a flow rate ranging from 0.1 to 0.7 mL/min as fuel. The maximum power density of the fuel cell fed with 0.5-M HCOOH was approximately 31, 32.16, and 31 mW/cm2 at 0.5, 0.6, and 0.7 mL/min, respectively. The simultaneous recording of the flow in the microchannel and the current density of the fuel cell at 0.2 V, within a 100-s duration, showed that the period and amplitude of each unsteady current oscillation were associated with the bubble resident time and bubble dimension, respectively. The effect of bubble dimension included the longitudinal and transverse bubble dimension, and the distance between two in-line bubbles as well.