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On the limiting factor of impregnation methods for developing Cu/CeO2 anodes for solid oxide fuel cells

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Abstract

The efficiency of impregnation methods for making Cu-based solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) is qualitatively characterized for the first time through a conformal coating model. It is found that the low-efficiency results from the uneven distribution of Cu instead of the small loading. Most of the Cu deposits form isolated islands, e.g., in a 20.4 vol.% Cu-loaded anode, 81% Cu is isolated from each other. In order to address the limited impregnation efficiency, two different procedures are adopted to fabricate the practical Cu/CeO2 anodes, namely, simultaneous and sequential impregnation procedures. It is found that CeO2 works as a solid dispersant, improving the Cu distribution drastically. Compared to the Cu-only anode, more than a threefold improvement of impregnation efficiency is achieved by both methods. The anode made by the sequential impregnation yields the best performance in CH4 at 700 °C, 170 mW cm−2, which represents an 18% enhancement over that of the simultaneous impregnation, or 340% over the Cu-only anode. These findings demonstrate that it is of importance to optimize the Cu impregnation to yield a highly active anode, and the sequential impregnation method is a promising procedure to break the efficiency-limiting factor and produce a high-performance anode with minimized fabrication effort.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2007AA05Z139) and by Natural Science Foundation of China (20901020, 51372057).

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Correspondence to Wenyuan Li or Zhe Lü.

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Li, W., Guan, B., Liu, M. et al. On the limiting factor of impregnation methods for developing Cu/CeO2 anodes for solid oxide fuel cells. J Solid State Electrochem 22, 1735–1743 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10008-017-3876-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10008-017-3876-9

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