Determination of Electrochemical Performance and Thermo-Mechanical-Chemical Stability of SOFCs from Defect Modeling (2006)

This research was focused on two distinct but related issues. The first issue concerned using defect modeling to understand the relationship between point defect concentration and the electrochemical, thermo-chemical and mechano-chemical properties of typical solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) materials. The second concerned developing relationships between the microstructural features of SOFC materials and their electrochemical performance. To understand the role point defects play in ceramics, a coherent analytical framework was used to develop expressions for the dependence of thermal expansion and elastic modulus on point defect concentration in ceramics. These models, collectively termed the continuum-level electrochemical model (CLEM), were validated through fits to experimental data from electrical conductivity, I-V characteristics, elastic modulus and thermo-chemical expansion experiments for (nominally pure) ceria, gadolinia-doped ceria (GDC) and yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) with consistently good fits. The same values for the material constants were used in all of the fits, further validating our approach. As predicted by the continuum-level electrochemical model, the results reveal that the concentration of defects has a significant effect on the physical properties of ceramic materials and related devices. Specifically, for pure ceria and GDC, the elastic modulus decreased while the chemical expansion increased considerably in low partial pressures of oxygen. Conversely, the physical properties of YSZ remained insensitive to changes in oxygen partial pressure within the studied range. Again, the findings concurred exactly with the predictions of our analytical model. Indeed, further analysis of the results suggests that an increase in the point defect content weakens the attractive forces between atoms in fluorite-structured oxides. The reduction treatment effects on the flexural strength and the fracture toughness of pure ceria were also evaluated at room temperature. The results reveal that the flexural strength decreases significantly after heat treatment in very low oxygen partial pressure environments; however, in contrast, fracture toughness is increased by 30-40% when the oxygen partial pressure was decreased to 10{sup -20} to 10{sup -22} atm range. Fractographic studies show that microcracks developed at 800 oC upon hydrogen reduction are responsible for the decreased strength. To understand the role of microstructure on electrochemical performance, electrical impedance spectra from symmetric LSM/YSZ/LSM cells was de-convoluted to obtain the key electrochemical components of electrode performance, namely charge transfer resistance, surface diffusion of reactive species and bulk gas diffusion through the electrode pores. These properties were then related to microstructural features, such as triple-phase boundary length and tortuosity. From these experiments we found that the impedance due to oxygen adsorption obeys a power law with pore surface area, while the impedance due to charge transfer is found to obey a power-law with respect to triple phase boundary length. A model based on kinetic theory explaining the power-law relationships observed was then developed. Finally, during our EIS work on the symmetric LSM/YSZ/LSM cells a technique was developed to improve the quality of high-frequency impedance data and their subsequent de-convolution.