Comparative Study of Various Materials for Solid Oxide Fuel Cells: A Review

Abstract

Solid State Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFC) offer clean and efficient power generation systems with good fuel flexibility, high power density, low pollution, modularity and high energy conversion efficiency. The conventional SOFCs operate at a higher temperature of about 1000 â°C. This limits the use of materials to be used for their construction. Presently, the major research effort ongoing is to develop the low cost intermediate temperature (IT) SOFC. These cells work in the temperature range of 500–800 â°C with power densities as high as possible. The main difficulty in developing these SOFCs is the degrading performance of fuel cells owing to lower ion conduction of the electrolyte. The selection of materials for different cell components is based on sufficient chemical and structural stability at intermediate temperatures, suitable electrical-conducting properties for various cell functions, minimal reactivity among cell components and matching thermal expansion of various components. In this review, comparative study of component materials of SOFC, effect of processing on properties of components of SOFC and various designs of SOFC have been compared.