Development of improved solid oxide fuel cell electrolyte sheet by microimprinting for layered material

At present, the solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) is attracting much attention because it possesses the highest power generation efficiency among many types of fuel cell, and SOFC emits only water that does not harm the environment. Recently, the electrolyte structure for SOFC has been processed into various forms to increase the efficiency of SOFC. In this work, we tried to improve the performance of SOFC by changing the mesostructure on the interfaces between the electrolyte and electrodes. This hundred-micrometer-scaled mesostructure has been proposed to increase the reaction on the interfaces. However, there has been no effective method of fabricating the cells with the microstructure along the interfaces. We have already proposed the micro powder imprint (µPI) method to create fine patterns on ceramic samples. In this study, the µPI method for layered material was newly developed to fabricate the micropatterns on both sides of an electrolyte sheet. The optimization of process parameters, such as compounding ratio, debinding temperature, and sintering temperature, was examined to obtain desired wavy patterns on both surfaces of the electrolyte sheet.