Microfluidic fuel cells fabrication

The emerging use of microfluidic fuel cells and batteries for analytical applications and educational purposes is also encouraging. The low cost, fabrication flexibility, and unique visualization capabilities inherent to microfluidic cells make them well suited as instructional tools to engage students in the classroom, potentially for a wide variety of courses in the areas of energy conversion and storage, applied chemistry, and microsystems. For analytical applications, standardized units could be produced as a convenient, low-cost platform for in situ lab-scale testing and characterization of electrochemical cell components such as novel electrocatalysts, catalyst supports, and bioelectrodes. Overall, microfluidic electrochemical cells may come to serve equally important functions as analytical and educational tools in addition to commercial utility. 

In contrast, microfluidic fuel cells are at the opposite end of the size spectrum, and have come into the realm of fuel cell research in the past decade as the general field of microfluidics has exploded with interest. This has been driven not only through the widespread availability of the tools for fabrication of microfluidic devices but also by the possible apphcation of microfluidic fuel cells in functional devices such as sensors and health care products. 

One way to ease any difficulties that may arise in fabricating a membrane, especially in design configurations that are not planar, is to go membraneless. Recent reports take advantage of the laminar flow innate to microfluidic reactors ° to develop membraneless fuel cells. The potential of the fuel cell is established at the boundary between parallel (channel) flows of the two fluids customarily compartmentalized in the fuel cell as fuel (anolyte) and oxidant (catholyte). Adapting prior redox fuel cell chemistry using a catholyte of V /V and an anolyte of Ferrigno et al. obtained 35 mA cmr at... 

Beloin-St-Pierre D, Paquin M, Frechette LG (2007) Design, fabrication, and characterization of microfabricated electrodes fra- a proton exchange membrane fuel cell. In Canadian workshop on MEMS and microfluidics (CWMEMS (2007), Montreal, 13 Aug 2007... 

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