Superior Electrochemical Performance of a CeGdO/ZrScO Thin Bilayer-Protected Gadolinium-Doped Ceria Electrolyte in Intermediate-Temperature Solid Oxide Fuel Cells

To improve the performance of the CeGdO (GDC) electrolyte in a solid oxide fuel cell, it is necessary to block the electronic conduction due to Ce/Ce transitions occurring at elevated temperatures. In this work, a GDC/ScSZ double layer consisting of 50 nm GDC and 100 nm ZrScO (ScSZ) thin films were deposited on a dense GDC substrate by the pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technology. The effectiveness of the double barrier layer in blocking the electronic conduction of the GDC electrolyte was investigated. The results showed that the ionic conductivity of GDC/ScSZ-GDC was slightly lower than that of GDC in the temperature range of 550-750 °C, but the difference gradually decreased with the increase in temperature. At 750 °C, the conductivity of GDC/ScSZ-GDC was 1.54 × 10 S·cm, which was almost the same as that of GDC. The electronic conductivity of GDC/ScSZ-GDC was 1.28 × 10 S·cm, which was lower than that of GDC. The conductivity results showed that the ScSZ barrier layer can reduce electron transfer effectively. More obviously, the open-circuit voltage and the peak power density of the (NiO-GDC)|GDC/ScSZ-GDC|(LSCF-GDC) cell were higher than those of the (NiO-GDC)|GDC|(LSCF-GDC) cell in the temperature range of 550-750 °C. The superior performance of the GDC/ScSZ-GDC electrolyte is attributed to the ScSZ thin layer, which is effective in blocking the electronic conduction of the GDC electrolyte.