Electrochemical contribution of silver current collector to oxygen reduction reaction over Ba0.5Sr0.5Co0.8Fe0.2O3−δ electrode on oxygen-ionic conducting electrolyte

Nowadays, there is a doubt about the electrochemical contribution of silver current collector on the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) over oxide electrodes in SOFCs since many reports have demonstrated that the modification of porous oxide electrodes with nano-size silver can obviously improve the electrocatalytic activity for ORR. In this study, the electrochemical contribution of silver current collector to the performance of Ba0.5Sr0.5Co0.8Fe0.2O3−δ (BSCF) electrode on Sm0.2Ce0.8O1.9 (SDC) electrolyte for ORR was specifically investigated. The active layer of BSCF electrode was found to be around 25 μm by using both silver and gold current collectors. Much better performance was demonstrated by using silver current collector, both from symmetric cell and single cell tests. However, EIS of silver on SDC electrolyte demonstrated the silver alone as electrode actually had poor performance for ORR. In addition, SEM-EDX confirmed that there was no silver diffused from the current collector layer to modify the porous BSCF electrode. Interestingly, the activation energy for oxygen reduction over BSCF electrode was reduced by applying silver current collector. We then proposed a mechanism to explain the improved electrochemical performance of BSCF electrode by considering the high activity of silver for oxygen surface diffusion.