The Gas Diffusion Layer (GDL) of fuel cell, are required to provide both delivery of reactant gases to the catalyst layer and removal of water in either vapor or liquid form in typical PEMFCs. In this study, the fabrication of GDL containing Micro Porous Layer (MPL) made of the slurry of PVDF mixed with carbon black is investigated in detail. Physical properties of GDL containing MPL, such as electrical resistance, gas permeability and microstructure were examined, and the performance of the cell using developed GDL with MPL was evaluated. The results show that MPL with PVDF binder demonstrated uniformly distributed microstructure without large cracks and pores, which resulted in better electrical conductivity. The fuel cell performance test demonstrates that the developed GDL with MPL has a great potential due to enhanced mass transport property due to its porous structure and small pore size.

This study has been carried out to investigate the precipitation behavior of ${\chi}$ phase and effect of ${\chi}$ phase precipitation on the impact toughness of 25%Cr-7%Ni-4%Mo super duplex stainless steel. It was proved that the ${\chi}$ phase was a intermetallic compound, which represented the higher chromium and molybdenum concentration than the matrix phases, and also showed the higher molybdenum concentration than the ${\sigma}$ phase. The ${\chi}$ phase was precipitated at the interface between ferrite and austenite or inside the ferrite matrix in the early stage of aging. The number of ${\chi}$ phase precipitates increased with increasing aging time, however, after showing the maximum value, the number was decreased due to the gradual transformation of ${\chi}$ phase into ${\sigma}$-phase. Aging ferrite phase was decomposed by the $r^2$ phase and ${\sigma}$-phase. Impact toughness rapidly decreased with time in the initial stage of aging at ${\chi}$ phase start to precipitate. Thus, the impact toughness was greatly influence for the precipitation of ${\chi}$ phase.

An apparatus was constructed to nitrify small metallic sintered components by using a hollow-cathode discharge plasma method. A stainless steel basket, which contains a sintered part to be nitrified, is potentially grounded and serves as hollow-cathode electrode. Hollow-cathode plasma was produced by supplying the positive voltage to the anode. In this study sintered carbon iron and stainless steel were used as testing specimens. It was shown that an effective nitrifying took place by controlling the total pressure of nitrogen and hydrogen gas and applied voltage.

Transparent conductive ZnO/Ag/ZnO (ZAZ) multilayer films were deposited by Radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering and direct current (DC) magnetron sputtering. The effects of post deposition vacuum annealing temperature on the structural, electrical and optical properties of the ZAZ multilayer films were investigated. The thickness of ZAZ films is kept constant at ZnO 50 nm/Ag 5nm/ZnO 45 nm, while the vacuum annealing temperatures were varied from 200 and $400^{\circ}C$, respectively. As-deposited ZAZ films exhibit a sheet resistance of $6.1{\Omega}/{\Box}$ and optical transmittance of 72.7%. By increasing annealing temperature to $200^{\circ}C$, the resistivity decreased to as low as $5.3{\Omega}/{\Box}$ and optical transmittance also increased to as high as 82.1%. Post-deposition annealing of ZAZ multilayer films lead to considerably lower electrical resistivity and higher optical transparency, simultaneously by increased crystallization of the films.