Design of the micro passive airbreathing direct methanol fuel cell stack

Recently, concepts of portable and mobile for electronic devices spread out rapidly as the remarkable progress in information society. Therefore, we require for the power sources of an electronic device, such as more compact and higher power density per weight. The direct methanol fuel cell system has a lot of advantages such as environmentally safe, high efficiency, small size, continuous power, no capacity degradation with reuse and recharging, simple configuration, small size, high specific power densities and portable. Its' ideal power for portable applications as a commercial application. The paper designs a new structure of micro passive air-breathing direct methanol fuel cell stack by using micromechanical fabrication technology, with each cell formed with an active area of 2cm × 2 cm., it is a ten cell stack. At ambient temperature, supplying methanol with concentration of 2mol/L to the anode, the open circuit voltage is 3.676V, the short circuit current is 153.5mA, the maximal power is about 128 mW.