Fabrication of Metal-Supported Proton-Conducting Electrolysers with Thin Film Sr- and Ce-Doped BZY Electrolyte

In this work, we present fabrication and initial testing of metal-supported proton ceramic electrolyser (MS-PCEC) single cells with a thin electrolyte. Plansee ITM porous metal is used as metal support. Spray-coating is used to deposit a conducting layer of La1-xSrxTi1-yNiyO3-δ(LSTN) which is used for low temperature (600-800 °C) deposition of a gas-tight, thin-film layer (~2 μm) of electrolyte by pulsed laser deposition (PLD). Post-annealing of the electrolyte is evaluated to improve its performance. In order to have a smaller thermal expansion coefficient (TEC) mismatch towards LSTN (~10-11 × 10-6K-1), we developed a new Sr- and Ce-doped proton-conducting electrolyte, yielding a larger TEC (~10-11 × 10-6K-1) compared to BZY (~8 × 10-6K-1). The cell with Pt as air electrode shows acceptable open circuit voltage and low overpotentials at 600 °C, demonstrating the potential of developing the first working MS-PCEC.