Inkjet Printing for Manufacturing Solid Oxide Fuel Cells

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.