Powder synthesis, processing and characterization of lanthanum silicates for SOFC application

Recent studies have shown that rare earth silicates exhibit higher oxygen conductivity at lower temperatures (500-800 °C) compared to traditional yttria-stabilized cubic zirconia. Among the rare earth silicates, doped lanthanum silicates are known to exhibit higher ionic conductivity. The difficulty in sinterability of these powders combined with the fact that the electrolyte material should be sintered onto a porous anode material in a single sintering step to produce SOFC half cells requires very fine starting powders with high sinterability at lower temperatures (1000-1200 °C). In this paper, we report on the synthesis of lanthanum silicates doped with aluminium or iron using the sol-gel process. Using this fairly simple and quick process, nanometer sized powders with an average grain size below 100 nm have been synthesised, while the intrinsic nanostructure could be maintained in the fully densified electrolyte material after pulsed electric current sintering (PECS) at 1100-1200 °C.