Fabrication of 3D NiO-YSZ structures for enhanced performance of solid oxide fuel cells and electrolysers

Increasing densities of (electrode–electrolyte-pore) triple phase boundaries (TPBs) / reaction sites enhance performances of solid oxide electrochemical reactors (SOERs) in both fuel cell (SOFC) and electrolyser (SOE) modes. Inkjet 3D printing is capable of construction of ceramic microstructures on support layers, enabling fabrication of SOERs with enhanced active area to geometric area ratios, thereby up-scaling effective areas / TBP lengths per unit volume. A Ni(O)-YSZ functional layer was designed and 3D inkjet printed with a surface of circular pillars, a facile geometry for printing that increased the interfacial to geometric area ratio. Deposition of further functional layers and sintering resulted in fully fabricated reactors with structures: H2O-H2 | Ni(O)-YSZ support | Ni(O)-YSZ pillars | YSZ | YSZ-LSM | O2, Air. The corresponding planar structured cell also was fabricated with the same components, for comparison of its electrochemical performance with that of the pillar-structured cell. The latter exhibited performance enhancement over its planar counterpart by factors of ca. 1.5 in fuel cell mode, ca. 3 in steam electrolysis mode, and ca. 4–5 in CO2 electrolysis mode, thereby demonstrating the potential of geometric structuring of electrode | electrolyte interfaces by 3D printing for developing higher performance SOERs.