A Micro Direct Methanol Fuel Cell with Self-pumping of Liquid Fuel

This paper introduces a micro direct methanol fuel cell (μDMFC) with an imbedded self-pumping mechanism to deliver liquid fuel. The fuel is propelled without any power consuming component (e.g., a pump), while removing the CO2 bubbles generated by the fuel-cell electrochemical reaction of the system. Furthermore, the pumping rate is self-regulated by the reaction, i.e., by the load. By eliminating the need for a pump and gas/liquid separator, our design allows much simpler systems, which is especially beneficial for miniaturization. Although we test with μDMFC in this paper, the mechanism applies to other MAE-based fuel cells with organic liquid fuels as well.