Vanadium-Doped Ni/YSZ Anode Functional Layers for Solid Oxide Fuel Cells Produced via Magnetron Sputtering

Abstract

The electrode performance of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) strongly depends on their microstructural characteristics, such as the porosity, percolated paths of ionically and electronically conductive phases and in particular, the grain size. Deploying alternative manufacturing techniques, such as magnetron sputtering, that deposits nanostructured materials results in finer particle sizes and thus, increases the quantity of triple-phase boundaries in the anode functional layer (AFL) for SOFCs. Nanostructured NiO-YSZ thin films have been previously produced by reactive pulsed DC magnetron co-sputtering of metallic targets of zirconium-yttrium and nickel, defining the optimal deposition parameters to create state-of-the-art AFLs. Based on recent studies 1–3, the future of oxide-based anode materials for SOFCs will greatly focus on advancing the electrocatalyst through alternative non-precious metal doping and increasing the cell performance by tailoring the microstructure of the AFL. Therefore, in this study, vanadium oxides were doped into SOFC anodes using different concentrations to study their influence on the structural and morphological properties of magnetron-sputtered AFLs.