Integration design of membrane electrode assemblies in low temperature solid oxide fuel cell

In this paper, an integration design of membrane electrode assemblies in low temperature solid oxide fuel cells (LTSOFCs) is accomplished by using a mixed ionic-electronic conductor. The mixed ionic-electronic conductor is a composite material, LiNiCuZn oxides, Gd₂O₃ and Sm-doped CeO₂ composited with Na₂CO₃ (LiNiCuZn oxides-NGSDC), which consists of ionic conductor, n-type and p-type semiconductors. The multi-phase composite material can also be used in single layer fuel cell (SLFC) to replace single-phase materials. A SLFC using the LiNiCuZn oxides-NSGDC composite exhibits an OCV of 1.05 V and maximum power density of 800 mW cm^-2, which is comparable to the cell performance of conventional LTSOFCs and much higher than that of SLFC reported before. The reasons leading to the good performance are porous structure of electrode and the matching of ionic conductor and semiconductor.