Analysis of the Transient Characteristics of a Passive Micro Fuel Cell for Sensor Applications

Offering a high energy density fuel cells provide a promising approach as power sources for autarkic portable applications like sensor nodes. However, as they generally are designed for constant loads the transient characteristics are of great importance when exposed to the load pulses demanded by these applications. Therefore the transient characteristics of a self-breathing passive fuel cell are studied in this paper. The different transient mechanisms in a fuel cell are discussed and the characteristics of a planar cell are studied experimentally. As a consequence of the preliminary results a separation of the different mechanisms through a specific experimental setup is necessary. Furthermore first design rules for a cell intended for pulse applications are derived.