Monolithically integrated planar microfuel cell arrays

On-chip integration of fuel cells enables extremely compact reactor and maximizes the fuel storage volume, which is especially intriguing to applications where form factor is limited, such as wireless sensor nodes. This paper presents a serially connected monolithic fuel cell array based on planar configuration. High surface area catalysts were integrated on the chip by selective electrodeposition. An analytical model was proposed to model the electrode efficiency and to optimize the electrode dimensions. An equivalent circuit model was proposed to model the crosstalk effect between the serially connected fuel cells. Experiments were designed to verify these models. On-chip serial connection of twin-cell was successfully demonstrated for both gaseous and liquid fuels.