Mitigating thermal expansion effects in solid oxide fuel cell cathodes: A critical review

Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) are a promising technology for clean electricity generation. However, their performance degradation over time and with thermal cycles due to thermal incompatibility remains a significant challenge in achieving the industrial scale. Designing a thermally compatible cathode material to overcome this issue is essential to withstand more thermal cycles. Rather than reviewing the cathode materials, this review critically examines recent advances in mitigating cathode/electrolyte thermal incompatibility and delamination via designing cathode materials and cathode-electrolyte interfaces. This critical review provides an overview of SOFC application, significant challenges, and the delamination mechanism, followed by an elaboration on experimental strategies to tailor the thermal expansion of cathodes to reduce or eliminate cathode delamination. In the last section, the remaining challenges and future research opportunities are discussed to support the design of thermally compatible cathode materials for SOFCs with high durability.