Microfluidic Fuel Cells and Batteries

Design of Electrochemical Microfluidic Detectors: A Review

“…[8][9][10] Similarly, the small analyte volume necessary, combined with high sensitivity and selectivity have made microfluidic electrochemical sensors an attractive application. [11] Many of the specific applications have been summarized in recent reviews, for example, microfluidic flow cells, [12][13][14] CO 2 electroreduction flow cells, [15] microfluidic biosensors, [4,16,17] and nanofluidic sensors and processors. [18][19][20] While attractive, the combination of several simultaneous processes puts a large demand on the experimenter, where an understanding of the flow pattern, current and potential distribution, and the reaction environment is necessary.…”

Maximizing the power density of aqueous electrochemical flow cells with in operando deposition

“…These co-laminar flow cells (CLFCs) have been developed as both fuel cells and rechargeable flow batteries [5,6] with a wide range of reactant chemistries [7e10]. Although constrained in size by the hydrodynamic conditions necessary for laminar flow, these typically microscale devices benefit from the lower materials cost and higher durability expected from membraneless design [11]. It was suggested in a recent review by our group that to assess the viability of CLFC technology, efforts would need to be made to determine the ideal cell dimensions to produce the maximum power density as a starting point for scale-up of the technology and practical application pairing [12].…”

Microfluidic Electrochemical Cell Array in Series: Effect of Shunt Current

“…1 Among these microfluidic electrochemical cells, some have implemented the concept of co-laminar flow rather than a physical membrane to achieve reactant separation. In the former mentioned co-laminar flow cells (CLFCs), wherein species mixing is mainly governed by diffusion, the diffusional interface provides separation between the two flowing streams whilst permitting ion transport.…”

“…These membraneless CLFCs thus hold promises of future power generation for portable devices and off-grid sensors. 1,2 The first CLFC was introduced by Ferrigno et al in 2002, using vanadium redox species in a Y-shaped channel. 3 Since then, several reviews have been published which summarize the fundamental physics of these devices, 4 and also highlight some of the milestones achieved in device functionality, reactants and architectures, 2,5 for both fuel cells [6][7][8][9][10] and batteries.…”

“…Complementary to upscaling by expansion of single cells, which has fundamental limitations in this case, 1 stacking of multiple cells is an important strategy to meet the power requirements of target applications. However, stacking of fuel cells or flow batteries can lead to other performance drawbacks.…”