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Title: Fundamental understanding of oxygen reduction and reaction behavior and developing high performance and stable hetero-structured cathodes

Technical Report ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1355303· OSTI ID:1355303
 [1]
  1. West Virginia Univ., Morgantown, WV (United States)

New unique hetero-structured cathode has been developed in this project. La2NiO4+δ (LNO) as a surface catalyst with interstitial oxygen defects was introduced onto the state-of-the-art (La0.6Sr0.4)0.95Co0.2Fe0.8O3-δ (LSCF) cathode to enhance the surface-limited ORR kinetics on SOFC cathode. Furthermore, the hetero-structured cathode surface maintains high activity under electrode polarization with much less negative effects from surface cation segregation of Sr, which is known to cause degradation issues for conventional LSCF and LSC cathodes, thus improving the cathode long-term stability. The interface chemistry distribution and oxygen transport properties have been studied to prove the enhancement of power out and stability of LNO-infiltrated LSCF cathode. The further investigation demonstrates that CeO2 & La2-xNiO4+δ (x=0-0.2) co-infiltration is a simple and cost-effective method to improve both performance and stability of LSCF cathode by limiting nano-particles growth/delamination and further improve the surface stability. For the first time, a physical model is proposed to illustrate how unique interstitial species on hetero-structured cathode surface work to regulate the exchange rate of the incorporation reaction. Meanwhile, fundamental investigation of the surface oxygen exchange and bulk oxygen transport properties under over-potential conditions across cathode materials have been carried out in this project, which were discussed and compared to the Nernst equation that is generally applied to treat any oxide electrodes under equilibrium.

Research Organization:
West Virginia University Research Corporation, Morgantown, WV (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Fossil Energy (FE), Clean Coal and Carbon Management
DOE Contract Number:
FE0009675
OSTI ID:
1355303
Report Number(s):
Final Report: DOE-WVU-FE9675
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English