Novel in situ method (vacuum assisted electroless plating) modified porous cathode for solid oxide fuel cells

A novel in situ method – vacuum assisted electroless plating (VA–EP) is developed to modify the porous structure of various materials. The advantage of this method is it can form a metal network based on the already-given structure. We utilize this method to deposit silver (VA–EPA) in porous perovskite cathode Ba0.5Sr0.5Co0.8Fe0.2O3−δ (BSCF) for an intermediate temperature solid oxide fuel cell (IT–SOFC) in the present research. The results of investigation show the performance of the modified cathode (VA–EPA–BSCF) enhances greatly, for example, the polarization resistance of VA–EPA–BSCF decreases by 60% at 600 °C compared to BSCF.