Abstract
Microfluidic fuel cells (MFFCs) have been attracting significant research attention in recent years, considering the wider application potential. The application of additive manufacturing to facilitate the fabrication of customized flow channel structures and achieving controlled fluid flow attributes has been demonstrated. The next step is to exploit the wider possibilities with the use of additive technologies and explore the possible implementation of carefully crafted flow pathways to achieve better flow patterns as well as closely controlled reaction sites for better ion exchange. The design, analysis, and experimental validation of three flow channel forms are presented in this article, aiming at the effective use of additive technologies and achieving MFFCs with enhanced efficiencies. The planar, interdigitated, and corrugated honeycomb structures evaluated the target utilization of the infill patterns, elongated reaction sites, and the scaling-up of the cells into multilayer variants, respectively. Numerical simulation, experimental dye-flow, and electrical characterization results indicate that all three forms perform better than the variants reported in the current literature, while the scaled-up level 2 honeycomb structure appears to be the most promising one with the maximum current and power densities at 2.17 mA/cm2 and 812.8 μW/cm2, respectively.
Keywords
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
