Sol-Gel Combustion-Assisted Electrostatic Spray Deposition for Durable Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Cathodes

Jongseo Lee; Sehee Bang; Wonyoung Lee

doi:10.3389/fchem.2022.873758

Sol-Gel Combustion-Assisted Electrostatic Spray Deposition for Durable Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Cathodes

Front Chem. 2022 Apr 11:10:873758. doi: 10.3389/fchem.2022.873758. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Jongseo Lee¹, Sehee Bang², Wonyoung Lee²

Affiliations

¹ Advanced Defense Science and Technology Research Institute, Agency for Defense Development, Daejeon, South Korea.
² School of Mechanical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, South Korea.

Abstract

The chemical instability of perovskite oxides containing Sr is a critical issue for the long-term operation of solid oxide fuel cells. In this study, we demonstrate a remarkable improvement in the chemical and electrochemical stability of a heterostructured La_0.6Sr_0.4CoO_3-δ (LSC)-Ce_0.9Gd_0.1O_1.95 (GDC) electrode. Electrostatic spray deposition was employed to fabricate heterostructured nanoparticles in a single step with a coaxial nozzle supplying the LSC powders in the core nozzle and the GDC precursors in the shell nozzle. Moreover, the reducing fuel added to the GDC precursor solution induced the sol-gel combustion reaction in the droplet to form a uniform nanocrystalline GDC coating with high surface coverage. The high surface coverage of GDC on the LSC more significantly improved long-term stability compared with than of the bare LSC cathode at a constant current density of 1 A/cm² at 600°C for 100 h.

Keywords: electrostatic spray deposition; perovskite oxide; sol-gel combustion; solid oxide fuel cell; sr segregation.