Dense 8 mol% yttria-stabilized zirconia electrolyte by DLP stereolithography.

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]