This work mainly emphasizes the development of new materials and design for a bipolar/end plate in a direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC). According to the DOE requirements, preliminary studies show that SS 316 (Stainless Steel 316) is a suitable candidate. Several flow field designs were studied and a modified serpentine design was proposed. SS 316 end plates were fabricated with an intricate modified serpentine flow field design on it. The performance of a single stack DMFC with SS 316 end plates were studied with different operational parameters. A long-term test was carried out for 100 h with recycling the methanol and the contaminants in the MEA were characterized. The stack efficiency is found to be 51% and polarization losses are discussed. SS 316 with low permeability resulted in an increased pressure drop across the flow field, which increased the fuel cell performance. The use of SS 316 as bipolar plate material will reduce the machining cost as well as volume of the fuel cell stack. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.