Investigation on silver electric adhesive doped with Al2O3 ceramic particles for sealing planar solid oxide fuel cell

The silver electric adhesive doped with Al2O3 ceramic particles is used as sealing material for planar solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC). The sealing temperature of this sealing material is 600 °C with the heating rate of 2 °C min−1, and the minimal leak rate ranges from 0.030 sccm cm−1 to 0.040 sccm cm−1. When doping 15 mass% Al2O3 ceramic particles into this sealing material, the thermal expansion coefficient of this material decreases from 20 ppm K−1 to 15 ppm K−1, which improves the thermal matching performance and the long-term stability of the material significantly. When using the gradient sealing method with the pure silver electric adhesive and the silver electric adhesive doped with Al2O3 ceramic particles to seal the interface of Ni-YSZ/SUS430 in the simulating cell, the minimal leak rate of 0.035 sccm cm−1 is obtained for the cell. Furthermore, the simulating cell sealed with the compound silver electric adhesive presents good heat-resistant impact ability. Therefore, this compound sealing technique is a very promising sealing method for SOFC.