A Novel Co-firing Process for Multi-layers of Solid Oxide Fuel Cells

Abstract

The major challenge for the commercialization of SOFCs is to reduce high manufacturing costs. By simplifying the sintering process and reducing the sintering temperature in the fabrication process, the manufacturing costs of SOFC could be lowered significantly. A low-temperature co-firing process for three layers of SOFC including cathode (LSM/YSZ, [LSM:(La,Sr) MnO3),YSZ:Y2O3-ZrO2]), electrolyte(YSZ) and anode (YSZ/NiO) has been developed. The anode substrate of NiO/YSZ was formed and pre-sintered at 1000 ° for 2 hours, then the YSZ electrolyte layer and LSM/YSZ cathode layer were deposited successively, and finally the anode-supported SOFCs were fabricated by co-firing at 1200 ° for 5 hours. In order to minimize the mismatch in sintering shrinkage among the components of the cell, various amounts of pore former were added to the anode and cathode layers. The mismatch in sintering shrinkage is minimized by adding 15wt% of pore former to the anode and 20wt% to the cathode. The OCV of the co-fired anode-support trilayer cell was 1.05V at 800 °. The power density of this cell was 0.47W/cm2 at 800°.