Porous silicon fuel cells for micro power generation

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to report the recent progress in the development of porous silicon fuel cells for micro power generation. Previous work has demonstrated that an acid loaded porous silicon membrane could be a suitable proton conducting material that is compatible with silicon microfabrication technology. In this paper, we present recent improvements to our previously published micro fuel cell designs that achieve 94 mW cm−2 at room temperature. In addition, a percolation model is shown to be suitable for understanding the proton transport mechanism in acid loaded porous silicon membranes.