The mass production of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) requires a reduction in the materials cost. The most costly component of a PEMFC is the membrane electrode assembly (MEA), which contains the precious metal catalyst, platinum. Methods to reduce the associated coats include synthesizing new materials and minimizing platinum loading through advanced manufacturing. The MEAs are generally manufactured by decal transfer method. The decal transfer method necessitates coating wider catalyst layer to adress alignment tolerance stack up and membrane shrinkage issue at lamination. More recently, inkjet printing and low production processing lines have been investgated. The costs of existing processes are too high and not scalable and the film quality can be too low for long life. In order to support large scale manufacturing. alternative methode for MEA fabrication are imperative. Available fabrication techniques, such as direct coating by solution, vapor, or spraying are limited by slow production rate, excessive cost and waste, lack of discrete control and the need for solvent of additives to obtain more uniform coating.

The development a roll-to-roll manufacturing technique to fabricate MEAs by direct coating electrode in discrete patches onto polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM), through implementation of an advance slot-die coating approach. Direct coating is an enabling manufacturing technique that allows for several key advantages and cost reduction including, enhanced fabrication speeds; reduced yield loss potential; increased precious metal catalyst utilization and membrane utilization and elimination of release film cost (which may not be a trivial consumable cost), among others. However, the electrode for direct coating quite limitation about PEM, catalysts, ionomer and solvent system.

In this work, we focus on the design and optimization on the interfacial structures between direct coating electrode and PEMs and their impact on the fuel cell performance. Our approach includes preparation and characterization of direct coating electrode using variuos electrode components.

Figure. (a) Procedure of direct roll-to-roll coating process, and (b) catalysts coated membrane.