Fabrication of Flexible Micro-Pressure and Thermal Sensor for PEMFC Application

Abstract

As critical parameters of the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC), pressure drop and temperature distribution parameters help determine whether water flooding occurs. Cell performance becomes unpredictable during flooding, necessitating the continuous monitoring of pressure drop and temperature distribution for optimizing the cell performance and preventing fuel cell aging. Previous efforts have conducted pressure measurements at the inlet and outlet of a fuel cell, in which temperature distribution is thermal couple measured from outside the fuel cells. Additionally, analyzing the pressure drop and temperature information inside the PEMFC is extremely difficult. This study describes the fabrication of flexible micro-capacitive pressure sensors and resistance temperature detector (RTD) thermal sensors based on micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS). Sensing area of a micro-capacitive pressure sensor is 500 × 500 μm², pressure of the gauge pressure ranges from 0 to 3 atm, the sensitivity is 0.2833 pF/atm, temperature of a micro-RTD thermal sensor ranges from 30 to 90°C, and the sensitivity is 1.1 Ω/°C.

Keywords:

• MEMS
• PEMFC
• Micro-pressure sensor
• PDMS
• Micro-thermal sensor

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This work was accomplished with much needed support and the authors would like to thank the financial support of this research from the National Science Council of R.O.C. through the grant NSC 100-2628-E-155 -002 -MY2. The authors also like to thank Lung-Jieh Yang, Shuo-Jen Lee, Shih Hung Chan, Ay Su, Fangbor Weng, Guo Bin Jung for their valuable advice and assistance in experiment. In addition, they would like to thank the MEMS Lab of Tamkang University, and the Fuel Cell Center and NEMS Common Lab of Yuan Ze University for providing access to their research facilities.