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Developing Next Generation High Performance Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells Using Metal Foam As Gas Diffusion Layer

In recent years, low-temperature polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) have played an increasingly important role in zero emission strategy to halt climate change. The performance improvement is a particular focus of fuel cell research and development, with water management being one of the major areas of interest. Here we report the development of a novel metal foam gas diffusion layer (GDL) material with embedded gas flow channels. Owing to the porous nature of the gas channel walls, the membrane electrode assembly (MEA) performance is significantly improved as a result of enhanced mass transport. Unprecedented high power density of 2.09 W/cm2 was observed at 90% relative humidity, and 2.04 W/cm2 for 149% relative humidity, which are respectively 12% and 37% improvement over current state-of-the-art low temperature PEMFC performance. Furthermore, we demonstrated that with our metal foam GDL, it is possible to simplify the flow field design on the bipolar plate, leading to manufacturing cost reduction of the fuel cell components. The work provides new pathway to achieve both high performance and low cost for fuel cells, water electrolyzers and other related technologies.