Solid Oxide Fuel Cell
Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFCs) are attractive for their high energy conversion efficiency in the usage of fuels ranging from hydrogen to hydrocarbons. One of the biggest engineering challenges of SOFCs is their high operating temperatures, usually above 800 °C. Such temperatures diminish the SOFCs practicality for applications such as portable power sources. Therefore, our goal is to enable lower temperature efficient operation of SOFCs.
Our fuel cell research contains two fundamental parts: electrolyte and electrode. We applied our expertise in atomic layer deposition (ALD) and nanopatterning to engineer the desired properties of electrolytes and electrodes.
- Ref left: “Atomic Layer Deposition of Yttria-stabilized Zirconia for Solid Oxide Fuel Cells,” J. H. Shim, C.-C. Chao, H. Huang, F. B. Prinz, Chem. Mater. 19, 3850 (2007).
- Ref mid: “Solid Oxide Fuel Cell with Corrugated Thin Film Electrolyte,” P.-C. Su, C.-C. Chao, J. H. Shim, R. Fasching, F. B. Prinz, Nano Lett. 8, 2289 (2008).
- Ref right: “Surface Modification of Yttria-Stabilized Zirconia Electrolyte by Atomic Layer Deposition,” C.-C. Chao, Y. B. Kim, F. B. Prinz, Nano Lett. 9, 3626 (2009).