Abstract
Gadolinia-doped ceria (GDC) is a promising electrolyte material for low-temperature solid oxide fuel cells (LT-SOFCs). Many works used ceramic sintering methods to prepare the GDC electrolyte, which was mature and reliable but presented difficulties in rapidly preparing a large area of GDC electrolyte without cracks. The low-pressure plasma spray (LPPS) process has the potential to solve this problem, but few studies have been conducted to date. In this work, submicron GDC powder was agglomerated by a spray drying method to achieve the proper granularity with D50 about 10 μm, and then two dense GDC coatings were fabricated with this agglomerated GDC powder using very-low-pressure plasma spray (VLPPS) and plasma spray–physical vapor deposition (PS-PVD), respectively. The results indicate that the two GDC coatings exhibited similar microstructure but with different densification mechanisms. The VLPPS coating was mainly built up in the form of liquid splats, which had lower mechanical properties due to the lower density and crystallinity, while the PS-PVD coating was co-deposited with the vapor clusters and liquid splats, which had higher density, crystallinity, and mechanical properties. It can therefore be concluded that the GDC coating prepared by PS-PVD is more appropriate for the LT-SOFC application.
Highlights
The solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) is a new type of green power generation device that can directly convert the chemical energy of fuels into electric energy at high efficiency [1]
The thickness of the very-low-pressure plasma spray (VLPPS) coating was about 60 μm (Figure 2a), and the microstructure was densely packed with a porosity of 4.28%
An agglomerated Gadolinia-doped ceria (GDC) powder was prepared by spray drying, with an average
Summary
The solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) is a new type of green power generation device that can directly convert the chemical energy of fuels into electric energy at high efficiency [1]. A current research hotspot is to develop SOFCs capable of operating at low temperature (≤600 ◦ C), aiming to reduce the cost and extend the battery life [2]. Lowering the operating temperature will increase the electrolyte resistance leading to a significant decrease in battery performance. A proposed solution is to develop a dense electrolyte coating with high electrical conductivity at low temperatures. Gadolinia-doped ceria (GDC) is one of the most promising candidates, as its ion conductivity at 600 ◦ C reaches 0.01–0.02 S/cm [3]. The conventional preparation method for the GDC electrolyte is sintering, but this makes it difficult to rapidly prepare dense GDC electrolyte on a large area without cracks
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