High Throughput Screening of Materials for Solid Oxide Fuel Cells

ABSTRACTState of the art commercial cathodes for solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) include LaMnO3 with a zirconia-based electrolyte. However, the vacancy concentration in A site doped LaMnO3 is low, thus ionic conductivity is also very low (10−7 – 10−8 S/cm at 800 °C). The surface path dominates the reaction rate of the LaMnO3 cathode; therefore the optimized electrode is a porous composite material of both the cathode material and electrolyte and relies on triple-point boundaries for performance. The electrical conductivity and thermal expansion properties of this cathode material and other A3+B3+O3 perovskites can be tuned by substitution at the A and/or B site. The numerous combinations of composition, processing and microstructure needed for improved cathode performance is well suited for a high throughput screening (HTS) approach towards optimization and discovery. We present here a high throughput discovery process that includes, synthesis, performance testing and characterization techniques directed towards new low temperature SOFC cathode materials.