A strategy of tailoring stable electrolyte material for high performance proton-conducting solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs).

A facile strategy was proposed to synthesize Nb-containing BaCeO 3 -based material, which is a potential electrolyte for proton-conducting solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs), via a wet chemical route while the conventional synthesis of Nb-containing oxides relied on the solid state reaction method due to the unavailability of suitable Nb-precursors such as Nb-nitrates resulting in a less desirable fuel cell performance when used as an electrolyte. The BaCe 0.7 Nb 0.1 Y 0.2 O 3 − δ (BCNY) electrolyte material in this study persisted a good chemical stability against CO 2 and exhibited good performance in the fuel cell application. The fuel cell with BCNY electrolyte film showed a high performance of 533 mW cm − 2 at 700 °C. This cell performance based on BCNY electrolyte was superior to that of many stable modified BaCeO 3 -based proton-conducting SOFCs where the electrolytes were tailored by other strategies. This result indicated that the strategy presented in this study could be an effective way to prepare a stable electrolyte for high performance proton-conducting SOFCs, which could advance the development of proton-conducting SOFCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]