Lanthanum Strontium Cobalt Ferrite-Copper Oxide As Cathode For Intermediate Temperature Solid Oxide Fuel Cell
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Date
2018-12-01
Authors
Mohd Abd Fatah, Ahmad Fuzamy
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) are the efficient yet environmentally benign
devices that can convert chemical energy into electrical energy and heat for large scale
applications. However, high operating temperature of this device limits the selection
of proper materials to be used as electrode and electrolyte as well as sacrifices the
durability. Thus, it is desirable to develop materials with superior electrochemical
performance at intermediate temperature (600-900 'C) for SOFC. LSCF doped with
CuO is an attractive yet promising cathode material for IT-SOFC owing to its
distinguished properties including high electrical conductivity and high catalytic
activity for the oxygen reduction reaction. This study was devoted to investigate the
influence of the synthesis routes, which are solid state route and sol-gel route toward
chemical, physical and electrochemical properties of composite LSCF-CuO. The
samples were synthesised at different temperatures ranging from 600 'C to 900 'C for
each route, respectively. XRD results showed high purity of as-synthesised samples
while in the meantime, increase in crystallinity was observed as the calcining
temperature increases, indicating bigger crystal size after calcined at 900 'C. SEM
images showed that the LSCF-CuO particles tend to expand as the calcining
temperature increases. Meanwhile, from the TGA results, it was clear that the LSCF-CuO has significantly loss its weight after calcined at designed temperatures (600 'C,
700 'C, 800 'C, 900 'C). LSCF-CuO showed promising electrochemical properties than
LSCF and the polarisation resistance obtained from LSCF-CuO synthesised using sol-gel method was much lower compared to that of solid state method. Moreover, it was
found that reducing calcining temperature can greatly influence the electrochemical
performance, which was in line with characterisation results. EIS analysis also showed
that addition of copper oxide toward LSCF type cathode greatly enhanced the
performance as the LSCF-CuO type cathode produced much lower polarization
resistance as compared to pure LSCF type cathode.