Mechanical Behavior of Free-Standing Fuel Cell Electrodes on Water Surface

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• 作者：Sanwi Kim ; Jae-Han Kim ; Jong-Gil Oh ; Kyung-Lim Jang ; Byeong-Heon Jeong ; Bo Ki Hong ; Taek-Soo Kim
• 刊名：ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：June 22, 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：8
• 期：24
• 页码：15391-15398
• 全文大小：470K
• 年卷期：0
• ISSN：1944-8252

文摘

Fundamental understanding of the mechanical behavior of polymer electrolyte fuel cell electrodes as free-standing materials is essential to develop mechanically robust fuel cells. However, this has been a significant challenge due to critical difficulties, such as separating the pristine electrode from the substrate without damage and precisely measuring the mechanical properties of the very fragile and thin electrodes. We report the mechanical behavior of free-standing fuel cell electrodes on the water surface through adopting an innovative ice-assisted separation method to separate the electrode from decal transfer film. It is found that doubling the ionomer content in electrodes increases not only the tensile stress at the break and the Young’s modulus (E) of the electrodes by approximately 2.1–3.5 and 1.7–2.4 times, respectively, but also the elongation at the break by approximately 1.5–1.7 times, which indicates that stronger, stiffer, and tougher electrodes are attained with increasing ionomer content, which have been of significant interest in materials research fields. The scaling law relationship between Young’s modulus and density (ρ) has been unveiled as E ∼ ρ^1.6, and it is compared with other materials. These findings can be used to develop mechanically robust electrodes for fuel cell applications.