Carbon-based textiles as gas diffusion layers (GDL) for polymer fuel cells

A Gas Diffusion Layer (GDL) is a sandwiched conductive and porous material interposed between the catalyst layer and the bipolar plates in a Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) . This electrode substrate is a multi-functional material with several properties. All these requirements are best met by carbon fibres based materials, woven carbon or paper. In this work, the attention is focused on a new family of GDL which are produced by an Italian company, SAATIgroup. In particular a new class of carbon cloth with different surface treatments have been considered: a sample without surface treatment, a samples with a plasma treatments and a sample coated with PTFE. All these GDLs were coated with a microporous layer (MPL) to optimize the water management and the ultimate electrochemical performance of a PEM. The morphological and electrical characterization of all the samples was carried out by means of different techniques. Moreover, as the aim of this work was to study the effects of gas and water transportation on cell performance by applying MPLs, fuel cell tests have been conducted to relate their characteristics to the polarization curves.