Micro-fuel cells - Current development and applications

The importance of micro-fuel cell has been increased with the demand for uninterrupted power source in today's power hungry portable electronics. Currently, there is aggressive research going on to commercialize the micro-fuel cell by many laboratories and companies. The three different fuels feeding systems, i.e. pure hydrogen, pure hydrocarbons (alcohol, i.e. methanol and ethanol; formic acid and ethylene glycol) and on-board hydrogen from reformed hydrocarbons like methanol or other compound like water can be used for operating the micro-fuel cells. The current status on the research and development of micro-fuel cell with all the above three types of fuels have been discussed. The different substrate materials used in micro-fuel cells for the suitability of the portable electronics have also been stated. The design aspects of micro-fuel cells and micro-reformers are discussed here. The current state of commercialization of micro-fuel cells for portable electronics has been reviewed based on the open literature. The hurdles to overcome in order to commercialize in full phase have been reported, whenever possible. Some very new technologies which can make the micro-fuel cell into a very promising system with a simple operation have also been focused. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.