A New Technique for the Rapid Manufacturing of Direct-Oxidation Anodes for SOFC's

A new rapid manufacturing technique for the production of SOFC anodes for direct oxidation of hydrocarbon fuels has been demonstrated. Composite anodes with doped ceria as catalyst and ion conductor and copper as electronic conductor have been fabricated by plasma spraying in air. The process, which can be readily automated and scaled up for mass production, provides a rapid method to produce anodes with mixtures of low and high melting temperature components in several minutes. These anodes previously have required complex multi-step, multi-day processes involving infiltration of sintered pre-forms. This work demonstrates the feasibility of using plasma spray processing to manufacture composite Cu-SDC coatings for application in direct-oxidation SOFC anodes.