Abstract

To directly use hydrocarbon fuel without a reforming process, a new microstructure for Ni/Sm0.2Ce0.8O2−δ (Ni/SDC) anodes, in which the Ni surface of the anode is covered with a porous Sm0.2Ce0.8O2−δ thin film, was investigated as an alternative to conventional Ni/YSZ anodes. The porous SDC thin layer was coated on the pores of the anode using the sol–gel coating method. The cell performance was improved by 20%–25% with the Ni/SDC anode relative to the cell performance with the Ni/YSZ anode due to the high ionic conductivity of the Ni/SDC anode and the increase of electrochemical reaction sites. For the SDC-coated Ni/SDC anode operating with methane fuel, no significant degradation of the cell performance was observed after 180 h due to the surface modification with the SDC film on the Ni surface, which opposes the severe degradation of the cell performance that was observed for the Ni/YSZ anode, which results from carbon deposition by methane cracking. Carbon was hardly detected in the SDC-coated Ni/SDC anode due to the catalytic oxidation of the deposited carbon on the SDC film as well as the electrochemical oxidation of methane in the triple-phase-boundary.

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