Effects of powder sizes and reduction parameters on the strength of Ni–YSZ anodes

In order for solid oxide fuel cells to survive the mechanical loading associated with residual manufacturing stresses, assembly, thermal mismatches, ion activity gradients, or operational loading, one or more components of the cell must provide sufficient mechanical strength. In anode-supported electrolyte designs, the anode layer is called upon to provide the necessary mechanical strength, in addition to fulfilling its electrical and electrochemical roles. To investigate how the starting powder sizes and how the reduction process parameters influenced the strength of NiO(Ni)–YSZ anode laminates, concentric ring-on-ring, biaxial flexure experiments were performed. Two composite microstructures and two reduction processes were examined. One specimen was obtained from powders with only fine (≈ 2 μm) NiO and YSZ particles, while the other had a bi-modal distribution of coarse and fine particles of NiO (11 μm and 5 μm) and YSZ (4 μm and 1 μm). One reduction process introduces forming gas at room temperature, while the other process introduced forming gas only after the specimen reached its reduction temperature (600 or 800 °C). The anodes containing coarse and fine particles had slower reduction rates, poorly connected microstructures, and had 35–40% lower biaxial flexure strengths than anodes with only fine starting powders. The temperature at which forming gas was introduced had a significant impact on the microstructural evolution and thus also on the mechanical properties. Although introducing forming gas at room temperature led to more complete and faster reductions, the resulting microstructures were poorly connected, and the reduced laminates had almost 30% less strength than laminates that were reduced at constant temperature.