High performance La2NiO4+δ-infiltrated (La0.6Sr0.4)0.995Co0.2Fe0.8O3−δ cathode for solid oxide fuel cells

In this paper, we reported our effort on improving electrochemical performance of (La0.6Sr0.4)0.995Co0.2Fe0.8O3−δ (LSCF) cathode in solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) by infiltration of La2NiO4+δ (LNO). It is found that a porous LSCF backbone coated with LNO nanoparticles is an attractive way to acquire a noticeable decrease in the polarization resistance and activation energy of LSCF cathode, thereby showing high surface activity and enhanced oxygen transport capability. The key contributions of the LNO nanoparticles also lead to a 67% increase in peak power density and operation stability at a constant current density of 250 mA cm−2 with a low degradation rate of 0.39% for about 500 h at 750 °C. Although extended durability of LNO-infiltrated LSCF might be concerned, based on coarsening of the LNO nanoparticles, a greatly increased power density and voltage output after a cell operation of 500 h engenders substantial confidence in the beneficial effect of LNO-infiltrated LSCF materials on cell properties. The enhancement of ORR kinetics could be ascribed to the increase of active surface area and active reaction regions from the heterostructured LSCF/LNO interface architecture, and/or favorable cation diffusion from LSCF to LNO.