Gaoqiang Yang¹, Jingke Mo¹, Zhenye Kang[1], Frederick A. List III², Johney B. Green Jr³, Sudarsanam S. Babu^2,4, Feng-Yuan Zhang*¹

Abstract

A proton exchange membrane electrolyzer is considered as a potential route to the hydrogen production in recent years. It offers a series of advantages, including high product purity, high working current and pressure. As a novel solution for manufacturing process, 3D printing technology is capable of fast and cost-saving prototyping with complex structure from digital models. By employing 3D printing technology, a stainless-steel (SS) component, which is functioned as both of bipolar plate and current distributor, was rapidly produced with selective laser melting (SLM) technique, and was then comprehensively investigated in a proton exchange membrane electrolyzer cell (PEMEC). The experimental results indicated the PEMEC with an 3D printed stainless steel bipolar plate provided an excellent performance, which reached 1.78 V at 2.0 A/cm² and 80 °C. Furthermore, the 3D printed SS cathode bipolar plate was also ex-situ characterized before and after test by SEM and EDS. This research of 3D printed stainless steel bipolar plate not only provides a route to the quick development of light weight and cheap electrolyzer, but also lead to improvements for other energy related devices.