High performance cathode-unsintered solid oxide fuel cell enhanced by porous Bi1.6Er0.4O3 (ESB) interlayer

Dense bismuth oxides stabilized with lanthanide dopants (δ-Bi2O3) are always used as interlayer for thin layer GDC (gadolinia-doped ceria) or YSZ (yttria-stabilized zirconia) electrolyte solid oxide fuel cell to improve the cell performance. Dense ESB (Bi1.6Er0.4O3) layer preparation needs special equipment or well synthesized nano-sized powders, which is not friendly for large scale and commercial application. In this paper, anode support unsintered cathode cell with porous ESB interlayer is prepared through simple screen print and its electrochemical performance is tested. No matter sintered or not, porous ESB interlayer lowers both the polarization resistance and ohmic resistance, and enhances cell performance, especially for the ohmic resistance of unsintered cells. The cell with ESB porous interlayer and SSC (Sm0.5Sr0.5CoO3-δ)-ESB unsintered cathode achieves a peak power density of 1.329 W cm−2 at 700 °C, which is 1.61 times higher than that of the cell without ESB interlayer and 0.93 times higher than that of the sintered cell. However, the durability of porous ESB interlayer enhanced cells is not ideal and it should be improved in further works.