Study and fabrication of Membrane-electrodes Assembly by plasma Directe deposition on high perfomance electrolyte membrane. – AMADEUS

Developping and improving new environnementally friendly energy sources is matter of a great attention. In the field of fuell cells, it is highly required to significantly reduce the fabrication costs. This means that progress should be done regarding fabrication technologies, catalyst content reduction, performances, simplifying fuel cell mounting (avoiding hot pressing). The present project is concerned by proof of concept for plasma sputtering deposition for fabricating AMEs by direct deposition of electrodes directly on the membranes, which is a kind of Catalyst Coated Membranes (CCM). The deposition will be done on membrane especially designed by CEA. It should be noticed that there is a need for directly working on membrane because integrators require to have AMEs avalaible for sale, no more individual components. This new situation favors to develop CCMs with performances relevant tfor applications such as mobile/portable devices to auxiliary power units. GREMI, LACCO and MID have succeeded in a breakthrough relative to catalyst content reduction down to 10 µgPtcm-2 per electrode. Moreover CNRS and Orleans University are owners of a patent (PCT/FR2006/051240 – FR 05/53668) , which is extended to countries, which is concerned by plasma CCM and CEA is owner of a patent on a high performance membrane (patent WO2009000779). The interest now is to make these breakthrough suitable for industrializing coatings on large areas, which will allows the availability on the market of self supported AMEs.
Theses three research groups wish to share their skills for improving reliability of a compact AME, eventually convenient for miniaturization. This project requires a rigorous work of optimization and durability as expected in ANR EMERGENCE program. The planned technology transfert lies upon a firmly intellectual property and will benefit from MID action on plasma processing of large areas. FIST SA will pay attention to MID contribution in order to promote possible complementary common results.