Investigation of Cr2SiC Ceramic MAX Phase Coated Metallic Bipolar Plates in Ex-situ Conditions for Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Essential for compact and lightweight proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) stacks, metallic bipolar plates (MBPs) suffer from durability and conductivity issues due to surface corrosion and passivation. This study conducts ex-situ characterization of Cr 2 SiC ceramic MAX phase coatings on stainless steel (SS) 316 L substrates to evaluate their suitability for MBP application. The investigation encompasses coating structure, surface morphology, corrosion resistance, surface wettability, in-plane electrical conductivity, and interfacial contact resistance. X-ray diffraction and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy confirm the presence of Cr 2 SiC coatings on SS316L, while energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy verifies uniform coverage and elemental weight percentage. Corrosion resistance is evaluated using potentiostatic and potentiodynamic polarization tests, showing excellent resistance with low corrosion current density (I corr ) at both 25 °C (3.29E-03 μA/cm 2 ) and 80 °C (4.32E-02 μA/cm 2 ), meeting US Department of Energy (DOE) technical targets. Potentiodynamic polarization reveals large corrosion potential and small I corr values at both temperatures, outperforming uncoated samples. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy post-accelerated corrosion tests show high charge transfer resistance at 25 °C (3.68E+05 Ω cm 2 ) and 80 °C (3.02E+05 Ω cm 2 ), indicating stability in acidic environments. Surface wettability analysis indicates low water affinity with a large contact angle (75°) and low surface free energy (28.92 mJ/m 2 ) for the coated samples as compared to the uncoated samples. Electrical conductivity meets DOE targets with an in-plane conductivity of 4.59E+05 S/m and interfacial contact resistance of 8.04 mΩcm 2 after 5-h accelerated corrosion tests at 80 °C. These results suggest that Cr 2 SiC coated SS316L exhibits excellent corrosion resistance, surface wettability, and electrical characteristics, making them viable for PEMFC applications. • Developed Cr 2 SiC coated samples demonstrate improved durability and conductivity. • Corrosion behaviour met Department of Energy (DOE) targets at 25 °C and 80 °C. • Coated samples maintained high charge transfer resistance post-accelerated corrosion. • Surface wettability analysis of coated samples revealed low water affinity. • Electrical characteristics of Cr 2 SiC coatings met DOE targets post-corrosion.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".