Corrosive characteristics of surface-modified stainless steel bipolar plate in solid polymer fuel cell

In this paper, corrosion behavior of an AISI 304 stainless steel modified by niobium or niobium nitride (denoted as niobized 304 SS and Nb-N 304 SS, respectively) is investigated in simulated solid polymer fuel cell (SPFC) operating conditions. Potentiodynamic polarizations show that the corrosion potentials of surface modified 304 SS shift to positive direction while the corrosion current densities decrease greatly comparing with the bare 304 SS in simulated anodic SPFC environments. The order of corrosive resistance in corrosive potential, corrosive current density and pitting potential is: Nb-N 304 SS > niobized 304 SS > bare 304 SS. In the methanol-fueled SPFC operating conditions, the results show that the corrosion resistance of bare and niobized 304 SS increases with the methanol concentration increasing in the test solutions.