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Improved oxygen surface exchange kinetics at grain boundaries in nanocrystalline yttria-stabilized zirconia

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Abstract

Quantum simulations of oxygen incorporation at a Σ5 grain boundary in yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ), a common solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) electrolyte, show that the incorporation energy is reduced compared with YSZ with no grain boundaries. The simulation results are supported by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) measurements conducted on a single crystalline YSZ substrate with nanogranular interlayered YSZ. EIS results showed that single crystalline YSZ membranes with nanogranular surface (i.e., high grain boundary densities) exhibit small electrode impedances than the reference single crystalline YSZ. The 20-nm-thick nanogranular YSZ interlayer was fabricated by atomic layer deposition and the performance for SOFCs with nanograined interlayer was increased by factor of 2 at operating temperatures between 350 and 450 °C.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Dr. Turgut M. Gür for helpful discussion, and the members of Nanoscale Prototyping Laboratory at Stanford University for their support and suggestions. This research used resources of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, which is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, 94305, USA

    Joong Sun Park, Timothy P. Holme, Joon Hyung Shim & Fritz B. Prinz

  2. Environmental Energy Technologies Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, 94720, USA

    Joong Sun Park

  3. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Korea University, Seoul, Korea

    Joon Hyung Shim

  4. Department of Material Science and Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, 94305, USA

    Fritz B. Prinz

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  1. Joong Sun Park
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  2. Timothy P. Holme
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  4. Fritz B. Prinz
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Correspondence to Joong Sun Park.

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Park, J.S., Holme, T.P., Shim, J.H. et al. Improved oxygen surface exchange kinetics at grain boundaries in nanocrystalline yttria-stabilized zirconia. MRS Communications 2, 107–111 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1557/mrc.2012.18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/mrc.2012.18

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