Designing a Cost-Effective and Sustainable Process for the Efficient Production of Planar Anode-Supported Solid Oxide Fuel Cells

A sustainable process is designed to produce anode-supported solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs). Environmentally friendly solvents and additives are selected to prepare sequentially cast slurries to obtain a flexible multilayer tape whose cohesion is ensured by a 3D network of binder. This tape includes the components of the oxide precursor of the half cell with the functional and structural part of the anode. The optimization of debinding and sintering processes allows converting green tape into sintered multilayer ceramic using a single heat treatment. The use of optimized loads maintains planarity of samples with adjusted shape (circular to square) and size (from 0.8 up to 8 cm²) of anodic half cell. The cell's oxide precursor is supplemented by screen printing the cathode and converted to anode-support SOFC when the cell is first used. The whole process maintains mechanical integrity, microstructure of structured components, and insures interfaces enabling charge transfer high enough to achieve standard performances such as power of 411 mW cm⁻². The selection of cheap and harmless solvents and additives and the optimization of heat treatment lead to an ecocompatible low-cost process for manufacturing SOFCs, easily transferable to the industrial scale and suitable for the manufacture of all systems based on ceramic multilayers.