Review on Corrosion and Surface Modification of Stainless Steel Bipolar Plates for Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells

The bipolar plate is one of key core components of the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC), accounting for a significant part of total weight and cost of the PEMFC stack. Stainless steels have high strength, superior conductivity and thermal conductivity, good corrosion resistance, so they are often used as bipolar plate material. However, in PEMFC environment, stainless steels will be corroded and can produce high resistance passive film, and thus reduces the cell performance. Therefore, the corrosion and surface treatment of stainless steel bipolar plates are extensively investigated. In this paper, the progress in research is described in detail.