Miniaturized proton exchange fuel cell in micromachined silicon surface

The increasing interest for light and movable electronic systems, cell phones and small digital devices, drives the technological research toward integrated regenerating power sources with small dimensions and great autonomy. Conventional batteries are already unable to deliver power in more and more shrunk volumes maintaining the requirements of long duration and lightweight. A possible solution to overcome these limits is the use of miniaturized fuel cell. The fuel cell offers a greater gravimetric energy density compared to conventional batteries. The micromachining technology of silicon is an important tool to reduce the fuel cell structure to micrometer sizes. The use of silicon also gives the opportunityto integrate the power source and the electronic circuits controlling the fuel cell on the same structure. This paper reports preliminary results concerning the micromachining procedure to fabricate an arrays of microchannels for a Si-based electrocatalytic membrane for miniaturized Si-based proton exchange membrane fuel cells.