| 초록 |
Due to increasing environmental concerns and escalating oil prices, increasing attention is being paid to fuel cell technologies. One of the current barriers to their commercialization is the cost of the components and manufacturing, specifically bipolar plates. Conductive thermoplastic composites are thought to be one of the most promising candidate materials to substitute for metallic and graphite materials in bipolar plates for low temperature fuel cells, such as Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) or Direct Methanol Fuel Cell (DMFC). Bipolar plates made from thermoplastic carbon composites are light in weight and can be shaped in mold. Research work on bipolar plate materials will bring about the next significant improvement in fuel cell performance by lowering the size, weight and cost of stacks. Our research group focuses on using polypropylene/conductive filler composites with low filler loading as materials for bipolar plate production. The selected conductive fillers used in our work are graphite, carbon fiber, carbon black, and graphene. These composites have a major advantage in that they can be produced by a conventional low-cost injection or compression molding techniques. However, it is difficult to meet desirable conductivity when using the composite plates while maintaining processability. Surface, contact, and volume resistance occurring in fuel cells causes low efficiency fuel cells containing the composite bipolar plates compared to fuel cells containing metallic or graphite bipolar plates. In this regard, several approaches, such as introducing small amounts of polypyrrole to the composites, coating polypyrrole via chemical polymerization or coating copper via electroless deposition on a bipolar plate surface, and inserting metal sheet into the composite plates, were created for reducing the resistance. |
