Fabrication of composite cathode by a new process for anode-supported tubular solid oxide fuel cells

Anode-supported tubular solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) fabricated by traditional method suffered from the charge exchange constraint on the interface of electrolyte and cathode. In this work, we introduced a new sintering process to obtain the dense and porous electrolyte bi-layer structure on anode-supported tubular SOFCs. The cathode was built by infiltrating nano-catalyst La0.6Sr0.4Fe0.9Sc0.1O3-δ (LSFSc) into the porous electrolyte, which showed better electrochemical activity than traditional LSM cathode. The functional fuel cells showed the maximum power density of 292.3mW·cm−2 at 800 °C with H2 as fuel and air as oxidant. This unique performance was due to the porous electrolyte provided more specific surface area for cathode and the nanostructured cathode catalyst showed high electro-catalysis for oxygen reduction reaction. Moreover, a long term test was carried out, demonstrating the excellent stability which was extremely important for application in the future.