A review of solid oxide fuel cell component fabrication methods toward lowering temperature

The solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) emerge as an alternative power generation system for high-scale stationary application and power plant station. The SOFC consumption leads to the high-efficiency energy production that forms variety of fuels up to 60% energy conversion; the operation system does not involve the burning process and minimizes the air pollution. Also, the aptitude to provide the cogenerative energy production from the heat waste during the operation process serve SOFC as an attractive green technology and environmentally friendly. However, the SOFC consumption remains limited for transportation and portable applications because the simple design of power source compartment is still the major hurdle in each SOFC component development and commercialization. Therefore, the appropriate fabrication method of each SOFC component is important to achieve the reliability of the SOFC application for the small-scale power generation design. In this paper, an overview of the design types and SOFC components and properties following electrode, electrolyte, interconnect and sealant are discussed and summarized. As the third-generation fuel cells, which entice the commercialization stage, this paper concentrates more on the fabrication method of each SOFC components that were explored including the working principle, advantage, disadvantage and several previous works on each fabrication method, which are described to finding the appropriate fabrication method toward lowering the operating temperature and develop the simple design of SOFC power sources system for the transportation and portable application. The targeted market power production of SOFC system for transportation application is about 5 kW and 250 W for portable application.