A fuel cell designed by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign can operate without a solid membrane separating fuel and oxidant, and functions with alkaline chemistry in addition to the more common acidic chemistry.
Like a battery, a fuel cell changes chemical energy into electrical energy. While most fuel cells employ a physical barrier to separate the fuel and oxidant, the microfluidic fuel cell developed at Illinois utilizes multi-stream laminar flow to accomplish the same task.