Inkjet Printing for Manufacturing Solid Oxide Fuel Cells
Gwon Deok Han, Kiho Bae, Eun Heui Kang, Hyung Jong Choi, Joon Hyung Shim
Abstract
The thinning strategy is effective to develop high-performance solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) that can operate at low temperatures. The inkjet printing, which enables precise thin-film production in a simple and cost-effective manner, can have an important role in the implementation of the thin-film SOFC technology. In this study, a method to manufacture the entire SOFC using a low-cost commercial inkjet printer is proposed. All the developed ceramic inks exhibited long-term dispersion stabilities and fluid properties suitable for inkjet printing. An inkjet-printed submicron-thick yttria-stabilized zirconia electrolyte maintained a high open-circuit voltage and robust uniform microstructure during electrochemical performance measurements. A fully inkjet-printed SOFC with a submicron-thick electrolyte achieved a high-power output of 730 mW cm–2 at 650 °C and significantly low degradation rate of 0.0002 V h–1 even in the durability test. These results indicate that inkjet printing could be successfully introduced to manufacture thin-film-based SOFC stacks.