Manufacture of Low-Temperature SOFC with Applying APS Coating Technology

Low-temperature solid oxide fuel cell (LTSOFC) has been developed for direct fuel-to-electricity transfer in the recent decade. High efficiency of such material systems working at low temperature (< 600 ºC) has been widely reported. In this paper, air-plasma spray (APS) coating technology was applied to make electro catalyst layers, i.e. Ni-Co-AL-Li oxide (NCAL), for the LTSOFC. The stability of the coating-made LTSOFC was evaluated by performing galvanostatic degradation test at 550 ºC which was compared with conventional powder-pressed fuel cells. The plasma spray coating technology showed the ability to improve the stability of the LTSOFC which encourages industries to further dig up the potentials of thermal spraying coating technologies to achieve the manufacture of larger-size devices of LTSOFC. The influence of the coating process parameters on the microstructure and fuel cell property was also investigated. The idea of pre high-temperature stabilization was also applied on the powder-pressing method to make LTSOFC.