Abstract
Nickel screens and foams are commonly used in alkaline
fuel cell (AFC) as substrates to support electrodes. The
methods used for fabrication of these substrates impact
significantly on the viability, with the material and
processing cost of nickel comprising almost one third of
the total. Therefore, improvements to the manufacturing
speed of substrates would increase affordability.
Currently, state of the art commercial selective laser
sintering systems are limited to a volumetric
manufacturing speed of 1-3?mm3/s. This study describes a
novel technique that multiplies the sintering speed of
nickel AFC substrates. The novel technique is based on an
integrating mirror, which creates a homogenized 60?mm
wide and 0.3?mm long beam from a Nd:YAG laser, and a
0.8?mm thick nickel powder layer in a nitrogen
environment. The influence of the nickel powder
characteristics, and sintering parameters, as velocity,
laser power, etc., and postsintering treatments of the
samples on the mechanical properties of the substrates
were studied. Based on experimental results, the
sintering speed could be multiplied up to a factor of 150
compared to the standard laser sintering speed.
Additionally, because structure of the substrate has a
significant impact on cell performance, a case study was
defined to present the performance and characteristics of
the sintered substrates on AFCs. Laser sintered
substrates show promise, exhibiting a small performance
drop of less than 25?mV (about 7%) compared to the
in-house standard.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | S29207-1-7 |
| Journal | Journal of Laser Applications |
| Volume | 27 |
| Issue number | S2 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2015 |
| MoE publication type | A1 Journal article-refereed |
Keywords
- laser sintering
- alkaline fuel cell
- integrating mirror