4.7 Article

Thin chromium nitride PVD coatings on stainless steel for conductive component as bipolar plates of PEM fuel cells: Ex-situ and in-situ performances evaluation

Journal

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HYDROGEN ENERGY
Volume 37, Issue 14, Pages 10789-10797

Publisher

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.ijhydene.2012.04.035

Keywords

Bipolar plates; Passive film; EIS; Corrosion; Contact resistance; Ageing

Funding

  1. ANR (French National Research Agency)

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In this paper, two types of chromium PVD coatings (100 nm) have been elaborated on 316L stainless steel (SS) by adjusting the nitrogen flow rate. The first coating is a mixture of Cr2N and Cr, the second one is a single phase CrN. It is shown that the performances of the material are strongly dependant of the nature of the passive film formed on the chromium nitride layers due to the galvanic coupling between the coating and the substrate. The CrN coated SS shows very good corrosion resistance in simulated PEMFC media. The surface conductivity of the SS is also greatly improved and the CrN coated SS shows an interfacial contact resistance of 10 m Omega cm(2) at 140 N cm(-2). Five single cells of stainless steel bipolar plates coated with the CrN film were assembled for performance test. This 5 cell stack does not show any mean voltage degradation over 200 h dynamic cycling. Moreover, the performances of the CrN coated SS bipolar plates are very close to the Au-coated SS bipolar plates. Copyright (C) 2012, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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