Study on the electrical and mechanical properties of phenol formaldehyde resin/graphite composite for bipolar plate

With phenol formaldehyde resin (PF) powder and graphite powder as raw materials, a kind of conductive composite for bipolar plate is obtained by hot-pressure molding. The effects of PF resin content, molding temperature and time on conductivity and bending strength of the composite were investigated in this paper; and the optimum PF resin content, molding temperature and time were obtained. The results show that: the conductivity decreases and bending strength increases with the increasing of PF resin content; the conductivity varies wave-like and bending strength increases firstly and then decreases with the increasing of molding temperature; the effects of molding time on properties of the composite are similar to that of molding temperature; and the best conductivity and bending strength of the composite are 142 s cm−1 and 61.6 MPa, respectively, when its PF resin content is 15% molded at 240 °C for 60 min.