Design and evaluation of a passive self-breathing micro fuel cell for autonomous portable applications

A micro fuel cell specifically designed to power complex intelligent autonomous portable systems is presented in this work. The requirements posed by the corresponding pulse shaped load profiles are analyzed and considered for the design of the passive selfbreathing micro fuel cell. Prototypes with an active area of 0.1 cm2 are built based on printed circuit board technologies and wet etching technologies are used for micro structured current collectors. Successful operation of the cell was demonstrated with pulse power densities of up to 220 mW cm-2.