Vanadium-Doped Ni/YSZ Anode Functional Layers for Solid Oxide Fuel Cells Produced via Magnetron Sputtering
Authors: Steier Katharina , Kelly Peter James , Kulczyk-Malecka Justyna 
Published: September 2023

The electrode performance of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) strongly depends on its microstructural characteristics, such as the porosity, percolated paths of ionically and electronically conductive phases and in particular, the grain size1. Deploying alternative manufacturing techniques that deposit nanostructured materials results in finer particle sizes and thus, increases the quantity of triple-phase boundaries. For that reason, the magnetron sputtering technique, which offers elemental distribution at the nanoscale, high deposition rates, reproducibility, scalability and excellent uniformity over large-area substrates has been chosen as the deposition method to fabricate anode functional layers (AFLs) for SOFCs.

Nanostructured NiO-YSZ thin films have been previously produced by reactive pulsed DC magnetron co-sputtering of metallic targets of zirconium-yttrium and nickel, defining the optimal deposition parameters to create state-of the-art AFLs. Former studies reported limitations of the process control during reactive magnetron sputtering, regarding the film’s composition 1,2. Since the composition strongly relies on the amount of reactive gas, i.e., oxygen, present during deposition, a feedback control system is required to prevent oxygen built-up leading to target poisoning and lower deposition rates.

Herein, we present a reactive feedback control system, that manages quantities of oxygen introduced to the sputtering chamber during deposition based on the oxygen partial pressure. This facilitates stable operation conditions, prevents target poisoning, and maintains the coating characteristics, i.e., its microstructure and desired composition when varying process parameters, such as the deposition pressure, target-substrate distance, or the deposition angle.

Based on recent studies 3–5, the future of oxide-based anode materials for SOFCs will greatly focus on reducing the Ni catalyst content through alternative non-precious metal doping and increasing the cell performance by tailoring the microstructure of the AFL. This would allow Ni coarsening to be mitigated and maintain the nanostructure over the lifetime of the cell. Therefore, in this study complex transition metal oxides, such as vanadium, tantalum or manganese oxides, were doped into SOFC anodes to study their influence on the structural and morphological properties of magnetron sputtered AFL. The effect of dopant concentration on the properties of Ni-YSZ films in as-deposited, pre-annealed and reduced state was analysed using SEM, EDS, XRD and XPS. To characterise the electrochemical performance of the deposited films, polarisation curves were obtained from SOFC single stack assemblies under hydrogen and air flows for anode and cathode, respectively, at operating temperatures of 750, 800 and 850 ℃.

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Figure 1