IMTC 2008 IEEE International Instrumentation and

Measurement Technology Conference

Victoria, Vancouver Island, Canada, May 1215, 2008

Simultaneous Measurement of Bulk and Contact Resistance

of Conductive Materials for Fuel Cells
E. Okel1, B. Schaar, O. Kanoun3
1
University of Kassel, eduard.okel@freenet.de
2
Group Research Powertrain, Fuel Cell,
Volkswagen AG, Wolfsburg, bastian.schaar@volkswagen.de
3
Chair for Measurement and Sensor Technology,
Chemnitz University of Technology, kanoun@ieee.org

Abstract The inner resistance of fuel cell is decisive for its
performance and depends strongly on the clamping force of the cell.
The bulk resistance of materials can be assumed as constant over
pressure range. With 90% the contact resistance is the most
important part in the overall resistance and decreases with
increasing pressure.
A measurement setup is developed for the simultaneous
measurement and separation of bulk and contact resistances of
materials used in fuel cells. High measurement accuracy and a good
reproducibility were achieved. The total resistance can be
determined with a standard deviation of 0.45-2% and the bulk
resistance with a standard deviation up to 1.9%.
Keywords separator plates, gas diffusion layer, fuel cell, bulk
resistance, contact resistance
I. INTRODUCTION
Fuel cells are a promising technology for a variety of
potential applications. The proton exchange membrane
(PEM) (Figure 1) fuel cell is considered as an alternative
power source for electric vehicles because of its high-energy
efficiency, pollution-free characteristic, compact dimensions,
suitable dynamic properties and reduced control expenditure.
m thin carbon material in which gas can diffuse to the
catalytict layer. Desirable properties of the GDL include a
good gas transport, removing the liquid water from the
catalyst layer and keep some water on surface to keep a good
conductivity through the PEM fuel cell. Desirable properties
of a bipolar plate are a sufficient electrical and thermal
conductivity, gas tightness and corrosion resistance.
All parts of the fuel cell are maintained together by means
of a clamping force which should be defined for an optimal
operation. A high clamping force results in a lower porosity
of the GDL and leads to increasing the transport resistances
of both gas and liquid phase. A high clamping force may
decrease the interfacial contact resistance, and hence
minimize the electrical resistance loss inside the fuel cell. A
compromise should be generally found between the two
effects in order to define the optimal clamping force for the
fuel cell.
In order to estimate the behavior of the used materials
within the cell during operation, bulk resistance and contact
resistance between different materials are to be determined.
The inner resistance of the fuel cell imposes the electric
losses and therefore the cell performance [2]. Contact
resistance between the bipolar plate (BPP) and the gas
diffusion layer (GDL) in a proton exchange membrane
(PEM) fuel cell constitutes a significant portion of the total
fuel cell electrical resistance under the normal operation
conditions.

Because most materials in fuel cells are made from thin

layers or foils operated at different clamping forces, common
methods of resistance measurement cannot be used for an
accurate investigation of cell materials.

Many investigations report on problems of reproducibility

Figure 1. Schematic of a PEM fuel cell stack [1]
The membrane electrode assembly (MEA) consisting of a
proton exchange membrane, a catalytic layer and a gas
diffusion layer (GDL) is one of the most important parts in a
fuel cell [1]. The gas diffusion layer consists of a porous 300
of the measurements. Contact resistance is in general
determined by the material properties, surface topology,
assembly pressure and operation conditions. For example the
porosity distribution of the GDL strongly depends on the
clamping force and the structure of bipolar plates [3]. It is
therefore important to have a measurement set up with a
reproducible force interaction. In [1] a measurement method
for measurement of contact resistance is described. In a first
setup a measurement is carried out on the bulk resistance of
bipolar plates and GDL and the contact resistances between
them and the copper contacts. The bulk resistance of GDL is
determined separately. This leads to additional inaccuracies
because of the difficult reproducibility of the application of
the force. Ihonen et al. [4] developed a novel PEM fuel cell
assembly to measure the clamping pressure and contact
resistances simultaneously for laboratory investigations.

In this paper a method is proposed that can be used to

specify both the contact- and the bulk resistance of
conductive compounds and thin materials.

II. APPROACH

Every conductive material has a material-specific

resistance the so called bulk resistance Rb and a contact
resistance Rc. These two resistances build together the total
resistance Rtotal:
Rtotal = Rb + 2 Rc (1)
The total resistance and the bulk resistance can be
measured, the contact resistance then calculates to:
Rtotal Rb
Rc = (2)
2
The so calculated specific resistances of different materials
can be then directly compared to each other. Parameter
changes in dependence of e.g. pressure or coatings can be
used to optimize the conductivity of fuel cells.
Figure 2. Measurement setup for a uniform force distribution [5]
A uniform contacting of the sample is very important. For
this purpose the contacting bodies should be absolutely flat.
For the measurement of solid materials e.g. conductive
compounds used in separator plates, a soft contact
intermediate e.g. a gas diffusion layer, with already known
material properties is used to level out the roughness in the
sample and the test probes (Figure 3).
Isolation
Measurement Gold Plated
Sensor for Rb Contacts

Rc,GDL
III. EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATIONS

For the measurement samples of approximately 4cm are Test Sample Rtotal
used. The samples are then brought between two gold-plated
probes with a size of 6,5cm. Rc
For the simulation of the dependence on the clamping
force, the samples are pressed together with the contact
blocks using hydraulic jack. For a good reproducibility of the
experiments, it is very important to have a uniform
distribution of the applied forces. A special appliance was Figure 3. Contacting of the measurement Sample for simultaneous
developed using a hydraulic with a load cell (Figure 2). measurement of the total resistance and bulk resistance [6]

Rtotal = Rb + 2 Rc + 2 Rb ,GDL + 2 Rc ,GDL (3)

Rb: Bulk resistance of the sample,

Rc: Contact resistance of the sample,
Rb,GDL: Bulk resistance to contact intermediate,
Rc,GDL: Contact resistance between gold-plated contacts
and contact intermediate.
 The current used for measurement should be chosen in
dependence to material limits. The voltage drop can be
measured and the total setup resistance is calculated to:

U total
Rtotal = (4)
I total

In order to be able to measure the bulk resistance

separately during the same experiment, suspended mounted,
isolated electrodes were integrated in the probe-plates. The
voltage drop between these electrodes is measured with a
high impedance voltage meter. The obtained measurements
correspond to the same conditions as the measurement Figure 5. Measurement setup for thin materials
including the contact resistances, so that a separation of both
parts can be easily realized.
IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
In order to achieve an accurate measurement of the bulk
resistance, the diameter of the bore of the measurement head In fig.6, some measurement results for the area specific
(Peak) should be smaller as the sample thickness (Figure 4). resistance is plotted against the applied pressure. The bulk
resistance is almost constant, the contact resistance decreases
U peak with increasing pressure due to the better connection between
Rb = (5) probe and sample.
I peak
b = Rb ASample (6)
total resistance bulk resistance contact resistance

With this measurement method, both total resistance and

bulk resistance are measured. By subtraction of the area
specific total resistance from the area specific bulk resistance
the area specific contact resistance can be calculated and
various materials can be compared to each other.

Figure 6. Separated bulk and contact resistance

The total resistance as the sum of contact and bulk

Figure 4. Homogeneity of the current distribution for bulk resistance
measurement
The bulk resistance of thin materials e.g. gas diffusion
layers (GDL), cannot fulfill the requirement concerning the
bore of the measurement head. It should be therefore
measured in a different manner. For this purpose a long
material strip is pressed within the setup (Figure 5). The total
resistance is measured. The contact resistance between the
contacting blocks and the sample can be neglected in this
case because the bulk resistance of the 30 cm long strip is
much higher. The in-plane resistance determined with this
method can be recalculated to the through-plane resistance.
resistance shows the same behavior as the contact resistance.
The results show that contact resistance can be up to 90% of
the total resistance. This corresponds together with the results
in [7] where it was shown that contact resistance between
GDL and BPP is greater than the bulk resistance of GDL or
BPP.
The contact resistance depends on surface parameters. On
a smooth, clean surface the sample has good contact to the
probe planes and this leads to a lower contact resistance. On a
non smooth and porous surface the contact surface is
decreased and the contact resistance increases at the same
pressure.
Results show that an anti corrosion treatment can increase
the contact resistance up to 50%.
 The measurement method achieves a good reproducibility [6] Niemzig O.: Entwicklung eines portablen PEM-
Brennstoffzellensystems mit Bipolarplatten aus einem elektronisch
for the measurement of bulk and total resistance. The leitfhigen thermoplastischen Compound-Material, Dissertation
standard deviation for bulk measurement is of 1.9%. The University of Duisburg Essen, 2005
standard deviation for the measurement of the total resistance
is of 0.45-2%. [7] M. Mathias, J. Roth, J. Fleming, W. Lehnert, in: W. Vielstich, A.
Lamm, H.A. Gasteiger (Eds.), Handbook of Fuel CellsFundamentals,
Technology and Applications, V3: Fuel Cell Technology and
As a consequence the filler distribution in compound Application, Wiley, 2003, pp. 517538.
materials can be tested and optimized. Measurements by
plastic compounds with conductive filler materials such as
separator plates have shown, that the distribution of
conductive fillers and the resulting resistance distribution is
not homogeneous and that the conductivity, due to the
manufacturing process, varies about 25%.

Measurements of the bulk resistance by compressible

materials show pressure dependence. In those thin, fibrous
materials the fibers are more closed together as the pressure
increases and this leading to a lower bulk resistance.

V. CONCLUSIONS

A measurement setup is developed for the simultaneous

measurement and separation of bulk and contact resistance of
materials used in fuel cells. High measurement accuracy has
been realized. The measurement setup uses very smooth
contact blocks and a uniform distributed clamping force was
realized by using a special appliance. For further
improvements a well known contact intermediate can be
used. The bulk resistance can be simultaneously determined
in a correct way if the probe tip isolation is smaller than the
sample thickness. For thin materials a separate measurement
is carried out in order to determine the resistance in plane and
then calculate the through-plane resistance.
Different measurements of bulk resistances were carried
out for qualification of different materials for use in fuel
cells. Even Compounds with different filler distributions
could be examined to minimize conductive losses.

REFERENCES

[1] P. Zhou, C.W. Wu, G.J. Ma: Influence of clamping force on the
performance of PEMFCs, Journal of Power Sources 163 (2007) 874
881

[2] J. Ge, A. Higier, H. Liu: Effect of gas diffusion layer compression on

PEM fuel cell performance, Journal of Power Sources 159 (2006)
922927

[3] P. Zhou, C.W. Wu: Numerical study on the compression effect of gas
diffusion layer on PEMFC performance, Journal of Power Sources
170 (2007) 93100

[4] J. Ihonen, G. Lindbergh, G. Sundholm, Electrochim. Acta 46 (2001)

28992911.

[5] Okel E.: Inbetriebnahme eines Widerstands-messstandes zur

Bestimmung der Leitfhigkeiten von Bipolarplatten und
Gasdiffusionsschichten, Master Thesis, VW-AG, University of
Kassel, 2007