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In this work, 8mol% yttria-stabilized zirconia (8YSZ) ripple-shaped electrolytes have been prepared by digital light processing (DLP) 3D printing and their electrochemical performances have been investigated. The total conductivities of flat samples printed at different angles were tested firstly to confirm that there is no huge influence on the electrochemical performance from the printing itself. Then, by using ripple-shaped electrolytes, primary cells were assembled and their electrochemical performance were investigated. Compared with the reference flat cell, an improvement of ~32% was achieved in the power density for the same thickness of the electrolyte (~200 µm) at 800 °C. Image, graphical abstract [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFCs) are environmentally efficient energy conversion devices, but are partially limited by the complicated fabrication procedure. In this work, dense 8 mol% yttria-stabilized zirconia (8YSZ) ceramics were successfully realized through a DLP (digital light processing) stereolithography method and the electrolyte self-supported fuel cell was also tested at 800 °C. The sintering behavior of the as-printed planar samples were investigated and a fully dense ceramic can be achieved at 1450 °C. The total conductivity of the sintered 8YSZ can reach 2.18 × 10−2 S cm−1 at a test temperature of 800 °C, which is acceptable for practical application. For the electrolyte self-supported fuel cell test, a power density of 114.3 mW cm−2 can be achieved when Ni-8YSZ cermet and La 0.8 Sr 0.2 MnO 3 (LSM) were used as anode and cathode. It was demonstrated that 3D printing is a promising processing technique to build up electrolyte self-supported SOFCs with desired structure for the future development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]