One step production process for large area supporting cathode

Tape casting is a cheap and easily scalable shaping technique used to produce large-area, flat ceramic substrate for SOFC applications. To obtain elements with the desired porosity it is necessary adding a pore forming agent in the tape casting slurry. In this work, the possibility to obtain porous La0.8Sr0.2MnO3-Ce0.8Gd0.2O2 (LSM-GDC) supporting cathode without the use of pore formers was evaluated. The reactive sintering approach was therefore considered to exploit the porosity induced by the precursor decomposition during a single thermal treatment of calcining-debonding-sintering. Through this approach the La0.8Sr0.2MnO3 phase was formed directly during the sintering step. This process allowed to obtain 10x10 cm2 LSM-GDC tapes with values of mechanical strength, porosity and permeability suitable for fuel cells applications without pore former addition and in a single thermal step. To the author knowledge this is the first time that a large area supporting cathode has been produced by tape casting using the reactive sintering approach