Corrosion studies on Fe-based amorphous alloys in simulated PEM fuel cell environment

In this paper, we introduce a novel idea of using metallic amorphous material as a bipolar plate for polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). The major requirement of the metallic bipolar plate material is their high corrosion resistance. Owing to its chemical homogeneity, and absence of defects (like grain boundaries, dislocations, etc.), amorphous materials exhibit a combination of attractive properties for bipolar plates such as high corrosion resistance and high strength (~ about 2 GPa). The corrosion properties of Fe48Cr15Mo14Y2C15B6 and of a newly developed Fe50Cr18Mo8Al2Y2C14B6 bulk metallic amorphous alloys have been investigated under conditions that simulate the fuel cell environment and are compared with those of a stainless steel. Hydrogen gas and pressurized air were bubbled into a 1 M H2SO4+2 ppm F- solution at 75 °C solution, throughout the experiment to simulate the respective anodic and cathodic PEMFC environment. In comparison to the stainless steel, the Fe50Cr18Mo8Al2Y2C14B6 amorphous alloy displays significantly higher corrosion resistance.