Infiltration of commercially available, anode supported SOFC’s via inkjet printing

Commercially available anode supported solid oxide fuel cells (NiO-8YSZ/8YSZ/LSCF- 20 mm in diameter) were anode infiltrated with gadolinium doped ceria (CGO) using a scalable drop-on-demand inkjet printing process. Cells were infiltrated with two different precursor solutions—water based or propionic acid based. The saturation limit of the 0.5 μm thick anode supports sintered at 1400 °C was found to be approximately 1wt%. No significant enhancement in power output was recorded at practical voltage levels. Microstructural characterisation was carried out after electrochemical performance testing using high resolution scanning electron microscopy. This work demonstrates that despite the feasibility of achieving CGO nanoparticle infiltration into thick, commercial SOFC anodes with a simple, low-cost and industrially scalable procedure other loss mechanisms were dominant. Infiltration of model symmetric anode cells with the propionic acid based ink demonstrated that significant reductions in polarisation resistance were possible.