Elsevier

Scripta Materialia

Volume 140, November 2017, Pages 5-8
Scripta Materialia

Regular article
Improved controllability of wet infiltration technique for fabrication of solid oxide fuel cell anodes

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scriptamat.2017.06.054Get rights and content

Abstract

Ni/yttria-stabilized zirconia anodes of solid oxide fuel cells are fabricated by a wet infiltration technique and the ability of the infiltration technique to control the anode microstructure is quantitatively demonstrated by a detailed three-dimensional microstructural analysis. The microstructural analysis reveals favorable aspects of the infiltrated anodes, such as larger triple-phase boundary density and sufficiently large pore size, and they are mostly unachievable by the conventional powder-mixing and sintering approaches. The improved controllability of the infiltration technique is expected to be useful to tailor porous microstructures to meet the multiple requirements for transport and electrochemical reactions within the anodes.

Section snippets

Acknowledgment

This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI grant number 15H06321. The authors would like to thank Asuto Masuyama for providing impedance and microstructural data of the conventional Ni-YSZ anode.

References (37)

  • H. Iwai et al.

    J. Power Sources

    (2010)
  • N. Vivet et al.

    J. Power Sources

    (2011)
  • M. Kishimoto et al.

    J. Power Sources

    (2011)
  • G. Brus et al.

    Int. J. Hydrog. Energy

    (2015)
  • G. Brus et al.

    J. Power Sources

    (2015)
  • S. Hara et al.

    J. Power Sources

    (2015)
  • S.P. Jiang

    Mater. Sci. Eng. A

    (2006)
  • S.P. Jiang

    Int. J. Hydrog. Energy

    (2012)
  • X. Li et al.

    J. Power Sources

    (2012)
  • Z. Liu et al.

    J. Power Sources

    (2013)
  • K. Tamm et al.

    Electrochim. Acta

    (2013)
  • A. Torabi et al.

    J. Power Sources

    (2013)
  • X. Meng et al.

    J. Power Sources

    (2014)
  • S.-I. Lee et al.

    J. Power Sources

    (2014)
  • F.S. Torknik et al.

    Ceram. Int.

    (2014)
  • J. Qiao et al.

    J. Power Sources

    (2007)
  • T. Klemensø et al.

    J. Power Sources

    (2010)
  • A. Buyukaksoy et al.

    J. Power Sources

    (2015)
  • Cited by (15)

    • Effects of pore former type on mechanical and electrochemical performance of anode support microtubes in solid oxide fuel cells

      2022, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy
      Citation Excerpt :

      The porous structure required for the electrodes is commonly achieved by mixing the initial electrode powders with a suitable amount of pore former, which are sacrificed during the burnout step of the sintering, leaving pores in the structure. They are also used to fabricate porous electrolyte/electrode scaffolds for the infiltration of other component(s) [1–14]. In these regards, graphite, starch, polymethyl methacrylate, cellulose, fish oil, carbon black, zirconium hydroxide, polymer fibers, paper-fibers, glassy carbon, activated carbon, paraffin, nickel salts, polystyrene, sucrose, acrylic resin, flour, polyvinyl butyral, encapsulated hydrocarbon and sodium carbonate were added as a pore former in the slurries for various methods to fabricate different layers in many SOFC geometric and structural designs in the literature [15–46].

    • Cathode infiltration with enhanced catalytic activity and durability for intermediate-temperature solid oxide fuel cells

      2022, Chinese Chemical Letters
      Citation Excerpt :

      Therefore, the electrolyte backbone-based infiltration is typically a time-consuming multi-step process to infiltrate a considerable amount of material to ensure good electronic conductivity and sufficient TPB. The increased cost on raw materials such as some Co-containing infiltrates should not be ignored [87–89]. To reduce the infiltration time, new infiltration methods have been developed.

    • Thin layer electrolyte impregnation into porous anode-supported fuel cell by ultrasonic spray pyrolysis

      2021, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy
      Citation Excerpt :

      The porous microstructure of SOFC electrodes correlates with the TPBs, gas diffusion, and concentration polarization. Adding an interlayer such as an AFL between the electrolyte and anode, and impregnating electrocatalytic particles into the porous anode effectively increase the TPBs and decrease the contact resistance between the electrolyte and the electrode [14,29–31]. However, the AFL and solution impregnation require additional processing and cost.

    • Optimization of Ni-YSZ anodes for tubular SOFC by a novel and efficient phase inversion-impregnation approach

      2018, Journal of Alloys and Compounds
      Citation Excerpt :

      The TPB length is dependent upon the optimization of anode porosity, microstructure and component distribution. It has been reported in numerous experimental studies that ion impregnation-derived SOFC electrodes presented considerable advantages in performance when compared with traditional composite electrodes [2–4]. Xia et al. [5] have theoretically proved by model calculation that the impregnated electrodes showed great enhancement in TPB length with respect to the conventional composite electrodes.

    • Pyrolyzable pore-formers for the porous-electrode formation in solid oxide fuel cells: A review

      2018, Ceramics International
      Citation Excerpt :

      Fig. 12 displays the porosity and pore size in the YSZ scaffold as a function of the amount of added pore-former. Kishimoto et al. reported that the porosity increased with increasing the pore-former amount [119]. The weight ratio of 50:50 carbon black to YSZ powder resulted in ca. 60% porosity and ca. 2.6 µm pore size in the scaffold.

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text