Fabrication of composite cathode by a new process for anode-supported tubular solid oxide fuel cells

Anode-supported tubular solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) fabricated by traditional method suffered from the charge exchange constraint on the interface of electrolyte and cathode. In this work, we introduced a new sintering process to obtain the dense and porous electrolyte bi-layer structure on anode-supported tubular SOFCs. The cathode was built by infiltrating nano-catalyst La 0.6 Sr 0.4 Fe 0.9 Sc 0.1 O 3-δ (LSFSc) into the porous electrolyte, which showed better electrochemical activity than traditional LSM cathode. The functional fuel cells showed the maximum power density of 292.3mW·cm −2 at 800 °C with H 2 as fuel and air as oxidant. This unique performance was due to the porous electrolyte provided more specific surface area for cathode and the nanostructured cathode catalyst showed high electro-catalysis for oxygen reduction reaction. Moreover, a long term test was carried out, demonstrating the excellent stability which was extremely important for application in the future.