Reported by Shanlin Zhang
Solid oxide cells (SOCs) have been developed primarily as fuel cells to convert fuels to electricity with high efficiency and low pollution, but can also work as highly efficient electrolyzers to produce various fuels from renewable electricity or as reversible devices for large-scale electricity storage. The relatively high operating temperature (700–800 °C) of SOCs provides certain advantages, but also raises issues with cost of the high-temperature materials utilized and their long-term stability. Thus, reducing SOC operating temperature is widely viewed as being critical for more widespread application, and there has been a research focus on finding a viable reduced-temperature oxygen electrode material. Although many perovskite-oxide-based electrodes have been shown to provide very good reduced-temperature performance, their long-term stability is inadequate for devices that should operate for >40000 h.
Under this circumstance, recently, Prof. Chang-Jiu Li group in XJTU and Prof. Scott A. Barnett gtoup in Northwestern University, developed a new perovskite composition where the substitution of a small amount (7–15%) of Co for Fe in Sr(Ti0.3Fe0.7)O3- yields a surprisingly large electrode performance improvement, making it comparable or better than most reported electrode materials. Furthermore, performance stability is much improved compared to prior materials. The overall property and performance results show that this is a highly desirable oxygen electrode material for next generation SOCs.
The experiment was mainly carried out by Associate Prof. Shan-Lin Zhang, from Prof. Chang-Jiu Li’s group, when he worked as a visiting schoolar in Prof. Scott A. Barnett’s Lab. The work is recently published as an article entitled “Cobalt-substituted SrTi0.3Fe0.7O3-: a stable high-performance oxygen electrode material for intermediate-temperature solid oxide electrochemical cells” on Energy & Environmental Science. Associate Prof. Shan-Lin Zhang is the first author. Prof. Chang-Jiu Li and Prof. Scott A. Barnett are the corresponding authors.
The paper is accessed by:
http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2018/ee/c8ee00449h#!divAbs
