An air-breathing micro direct methanol fuel cell stack employing a single shared anode using silicon microfabrication technologies

This paper presents a silicon-based air-breathing micro direct methanol fuel cell (muDMFC) stack with a shared anode plate and two air-breathing cathode plates. Three kinds of anode plates featured by different methanol transport methods are designed and simulated. Microfabrication technologies, including double-side lithography and bulk-micromachining, are used to fabricate both anode and cathode silicon plates on the same wafer simultaneously. Three muDMFC stacks with different kinds of anodes are assembled, and characterized with a single cell together. Simulation and experimental results show that the muDMFC stack with fuel transport in a shared model has the best performance, and this stack achieves a power of 2.52 mW which is almost double that of a single cell of 1.28 mW.