A high-performance cathode for the next generation of solid-oxide fuel cells

Zongping Shao and Sossina M. Haile ()
Additional contact information
Zongping Shao: California Institute of Technology
Sossina M. Haile: California Institute of Technology

Nature, 2004, vol. 431, issue 7005, 170-173

Abstract: Abstract Fuel cells directly and efficiently convert chemical energy to electrical energy1. Of the various fuel cell types, solid-oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) combine the benefits of environmentally benign power generation with fuel flexibility. However, the necessity for high operating temperatures (800–1,000 °C) has resulted in high costs and materials compatibility challenges2. As a consequence, significant effort has been devoted to the development of intermediate-temperature (500–700 °C) SOFCs. A key obstacle to reduced-temperature operation of SOFCs is the poor activity of traditional cathode materials for electrochemical reduction of oxygen in this temperature regime2. Here we present Ba0.5Sr0.5Co0.8Fe0.2O3-δ(BSCF) as a new cathode material for reduced-temperature SOFC operation. BSCF, incorporated into a thin-film doped ceria fuel cell, exhibits high power densities (1,010 mW cm-2 and 402 mW cm-2 at 600 °C and 500 °C, respectively) when operated with humidified hydrogen as the fuel and air as the cathode gas. We further demonstrate that BSCF is ideally suited to ‘single-chamber’ fuel-cell operation, where anode and cathode reactions take place within the same physical chamber3. The high power output of BSCF cathodes results from the high rate of oxygen diffusion through the material. By enabling operation at reduced temperatures, BSCF cathodes may result in widespread practical implementation of SOFCs.

Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (28)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature02863 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:431:y:2004:i:7005:d:10.1038_nature02863

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature02863

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().