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 BaCeO3-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 BaCe0.7Nb0.1Y0.2O3 − δ (BCNY) electrolyte material in this study persisted a good chemical stability against CO2 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 BaCeO3-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. Keywords: BaCeO3, Cell performance, Proton conductor, Solid oxide fuel cell, Synthesis strategy