A micro-nano porous oxide hybrid for efficient oxygen reduction in reduced-temperature solid oxide fuel cells

Tremendous efforts to develop high-efficiency reduced-temperature (≤ 600°C) solid oxide fuel cells are motivated by their potentials for reduced materials cost, less engineering challenge, and better performance durability. A key obstacle to such fuel cells arises from sluggish oxygen reduction reaction kinetics on the cathodes. Here we reported that an oxide hybrid, featuring a nanoporous Sm(0.5)Sr(0.5)CoO(3−δ) (SSC) catalyst coating bonded onto the internal surface of a high-porosity La(0.9)Sr(0.1)Ga(0.8)Mg(0.2)O(3−δ) (LSGM) backbone, exhibited superior catalytic activity for oxygen reduction reactions and thereby yielded low interfacial resistances in air, e.g., 0.021 Ω cm(2) at 650°C and 0.043 Ω cm(2) at 600°C. We further demonstrated that such a micro-nano porous hybrid, adopted as the cathode in a thin LSGM electrolyte fuel cell, produced impressive power densities of 2.02 W cm(−2) at 650°C and 1.46 W cm(−2) at 600°C when operated on humidified hydrogen fuel and air oxidant.