Improvement of solid oxide fuel cell by imprinted micropatterns on electrolyte

A study is presented of an improved interfacial structure between the electrode and electrolyte of a solid oxide fuel cell. An imprint process, which is considered as a powerful tool to transcribe nano to micropatterns on materials, was employed to imprint fine patterns onto a ceramic sheet of electrolyte. In the presented work, a sheet of ceramic compound material was prepared, and micropatterns were imprinted on its surface. After debinding and sintering, a dense ceramic sheet with fine micropatterns was obtained. To investigate the effect of micropatterns on the overall performance of a fuel cell, three kinds of electrolyte sheets with different surface patterns were employed for this technique. After applying anode and cathode layers, the three fuel cell samples were assembled to test the cell performance. The result was that the finer pattern caused better performance in the three samples by exhibiting the highest overall voltage and power density, and the effective factors of patterns on ion conductivity were discussed as well. Based on the investigation, some further improved three-dimensional microstructures were proposed and fabricated by the method of micro powder imprinting (μPI).