Review on the State of Art in Coating Materials for Bipolar Plates for Hydrogen Production by Water Electrolysis with Proton Exchange Membrane

Reducing costs and improving efficiency are the main challenges in the production of green hydrogen through proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzers. Titanium based components such as bipolar plates (BPP) account for the largest proportion of the cost composition. In this paper, some reported anti-corrosion coating materials based on stainless steel substrate for interface contact resistance are reviewed, and a research work with the best durability at present is mainly introduced. This work proposes the use of stainless-steel bipolar plates coated with Nb and Ti by magnetron sputtering physical vapor deposition (PVD) and vacuum plasma spraying (VPS), respectively. Titanium coating (50 μm) The stainless-steel substrate is protected from corrosion, and the contact resistance is reduced by nearly an order of magnitude with a 50 times thin niobium coating. Niobium/titanium coated stainless steel bipolar plates can operate in the anode environment under standard electrolytic corrosion conditions for more than 1000 h, showing the potential for long-term operation in PEM electrolyzers.