Polymer-Based Approach in Ceramic Materials Processing for Energy Device Applications

High temperature perovskite-type oxide conductive ceramics have attracted great attention worldwide due to the fact that these materials have a great potential to be used as electrolyte and cathode components in solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs). SOFC is currently deemed as one of the most promising future power generation devices due to its high energy conversion efficiency, less/zero pollutant emission and able to operate on various fuels. Two major concerns that limited the performance of the current developed SOFC systems are low electrolyte conductivity and high electrode polarization resistance [1,2]. Controlling and modifying the microstructural properties of the ceramics components of SOFC is a promising way to tackle the concerns and could be achieved by selecting suitable ceramics processing routes as they greatly affect the microstructure properties of the produced ceramics materials [3]. Traditionally, a Simple SolidState Reaction (SSR) method is used to prepare the perovskitetype oxide ceramics materials [4-7]. However, this method resulted in a poor microstructural property of the produced powders due to high temperature of treatment (> 1400 °C) and the produced powders are frequently contaminated [8,9]. Hence, Wet Chemical Methods (WCMs) are introduced to overcome the drawbacks of the SSR method. The WCMs are able to produce fine powders with high purity and good homogeneity at lower processing temperature than that of the SSR method [3,10]. One the most popular WCMs is a sol-gel method. The preparation of materials through this method is thoroughly discussed in the following section.