Fabrication of Metal-Supported Solid Oxide Fuel Cells by Sinter-Joining Method with Silver Bonding Layer

Abstract

Solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) is an energy conversion device which generates electricity from hydrogen. SOFC is attracting attentions because of its high energy conversion efficiency and low material cost. For these reasons, SOFC are widely studied to be applied to various power generation systems such as stationary power plant, residential power system, auxiliary power unit (APU), etc. For APU applications, high mechanical strength is required to endure mechanical vibration and external shock during the driving of vehicles, which makes ceramic-based SOFC unsuitable. To overcome this limitation, metal-supported SOFC has been proposed. Metal-supported SOFCs are composed of metal substrate which supports ceramic layers of anode, electrolyte, and cathode. For more than past ten years, various types of metal-supported SOFC have been developed in many organizations. However, conventional metal-supported SOFCs had limitations of high cost thin film coating process such as sputtering, plasma spray, etc, sintering at reducing atmosphere, and unsintered cathode. In our research group, metal-supported SOFCs fabricated by sinter-joining method were developed. To fabricate metal-supported SOFCs by sinter-joining method, metal substrates were bonded to conventional ceramic cells by bonding paste composed of mixture of stainless steel, nickel oxide, yittria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ). Recently, silver has been proposed as bonding materials. By using silver as bonding materials, bonding of ceramic cell can be performed at temperature lower than 950 °C at air atmosphere, which enables full sintering of cathode. This has been rarely reported because conventional metal-supported SOFCs were fabricated by sintering at reducing atmosphere to prevent oxidation of metal substrate during the sintering. Furthermore, it is believed that electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity are improved, leading to lower ohmic resistance and better temperature distribution of metal-supported cells. In this work, 5 x 5 cm2 metal-supported SOFCs with silver bonding layer was successfully fabricated. The microstructure of bonding layer was investigated, which showed good adhesion of silver bonding layer. Electrochemical performance and impedance spectra were studied. Power density of 433 mW/cm2, ohmic resistance of 0.52 Ω cm2, polarization resistance of 0.16 Ω cm2 at 800 °C were obtained, and it is believed that high power density was attributed to low polarization resistance by full sintering of cathode. Metal-supported SOFCs fabricated by sinter-joining method showed 10 times higher mechanical strength than conventional ceramic cells.