Facile preparation of electrodes of efficient electrolyte-supported solid oxide fuel cells using a direct assembly approach

Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) are the most efficient energy conversion technology to convert the chemical energy of fuels like hydrogen, natural gas, etc. to electricity. However, one of the limiting factors in the commercial viability of SOFCs technologies is the time-consuming and high-cost multiple cell fabrication processes. Here, we report the development of a facile procedure for the preparation of an electrolyte-supported cell with a Ni-Gd0.1Ce0.9O1.95 composite anode and a La0.6Sr0.4Co0.2Fe0.8O3-δ cathode, and the fabrication procedure of the electrodes decreases from four steps of screen-printing and sintering of conventional cell preparation processes to two steps of screen-printing using a direct assembly approach without the high-temperature sintering steps. The most important observation is the simultaneous formation of the electrode/electrolyte interfaces of both the anode and cathode by in situ passing a current through the directly assembled cells at 800 ℃. The power density of the directly assembled cell reaches 0.41 W cm−2 at a voltage of 0.7 V and 800 ℃, close to 0.46 W cm−2 of the sintered cell. The directly assembled cell shows comparable operational stability to the sintered cell at 800 ℃ for 100 h. This work sheds light on the facile fabrication of electrolyte-supported cells with substantially simplified preparation procedures and reduced costs.