Femtosecond laser ablated trench array for improving performance of commercial solid oxide cell

Abstract

The performance of electrode-supported solid oxide cells (SOCs) is limited adversely by gas diffusion impedance in thick and porous support. This work focuses on the improvement of gas transport properties of commercial Ni-YSZ anode-supported SOFC by femtosecond laser-based micromachining where micro-holes of identical depth but different hole separations pitches with minimal heated affected zones were imposed. The polarization resistance calculations and DRT analysis revealed that the presence of the micro-holes improves fuel transport in the anode active zone of commercial SOFC. The presence of the micro-holes resulted in up to 20.8 % and up to 17.2 % reduction in polarization resistance for dry H2 and wet H2 gas-fueled SOFC samples, respectively. Moreover, the decrease in intensity of peaks responsible for fuel diffusion with increasing micro-holed density was observed. Therefore, dense and sparse cells exhibited a performance augmentation of 25 % and 11 % in dry H2 and enhancement of 16 % and 15.6 % in wet H2, respectively. Fs-laser ablation appeared as a unique capability for the post-processing of SOFC elements via imposing different gas channel geometries.