Accessories decide whether your electrolyzer or fuel-cell test stays a clean experiment or becomes a contamination hunt. The hardware in this collection sits one layer below the cell itself: jars and plates that prepare catalyst and ionomer slurries, coater parts that lay them down on gas-diffusion layers and membranes, roll-handling and pressing tools that finish the electrode, and rigs that hold pouch or short-stack assemblies during electrochemical testing. Choose them by the wear, sealing, and dimensional control your MEA workflow actually demands.
Slurry and powder preparation. Catalyst inks for PEM, AEM, and SOEC electrodes are sensitive to metal pickup and to oxygen and moisture exposure. Use:
- Zirconia jars and media for low-contamination milling of Pt/C, Ir/IrO2, Ni-based AEM catalysts, and oxide perovskites for SOEC air electrodes.
- Alumina jars when you need a harder, more chemically inert surface for SOFC/SOEC cermet and electrolyte powders (YSZ, GDC, LSCF).
- Stainless and agate options for cost-sensitive or short-run work where trace Fe or Si is acceptable.
- Vacuum-sealed milling jars when ionomer-bound inks or air-sensitive intermediates must stay isolated from O2 and H2O during high-energy milling.
Coating and lamination. Slot-die heads with coat-hanger manifolds give the cross-web uniformity needed for catalyst-coated membranes and GDE coatings; adjustable doctor blades cover lower-throughput tape-cast layers such as SOEC electrolyte tapes and porous transport layer interlayers. Roll-to-roll handling units control web tension on thin metal foils, polymer substrates, and PFSA-ionomer-coated rolls so coating thickness stays on target.
Electrode and stack finishing. Roll-press accessories densify catalyst layers and bond MPL/PTL stacks, while ultrasonic welding heads bond copper and aluminum tabs and current-collector strips on small short-stack assemblies. Knurl pattern, foil thickness, and material hardness all need to match.
Cell-level testing fixtures. Pouch racks, quick-press fixtures, and PCB clamps in this section adapt the same hardware used in lithium-ion cycling to single-cell and short-stack PEM/AEM testing, with low-resistance gold-plated contacts and Kelvin sensing for accurate iR-corrected polarization curves.
If you are starting from catalyst powder, begin with the milling jars and vacuum jars; for MEA fabrication, see the slot-die and doctor-blade tooling; for testing, pair these accessories with Electrolyzers & Fuel Cells hardware and the broader Energy Conversion catalog.
