First principles study of Cr poisoning in solid oxide fuel cell cathodes: Application to (La,Sr) CoO 3

Abstract Solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) systems provide efficient and clean power. Chromium poisoning is known to deteriorate the performance of the SOFC cathodes such as La 1−x Sr x CoO 3 (LSCO) due to the formation of undesired products. We identify the reaction products when LSCO is in a CrO 3 and O 2 atmosphere using first principle thermodynamics, with the assumption that gas-phase CrO 3 is the Cr source. Our results correctly identify SrCrO 4 as the primary Cr poisoning product as observed in experiments and also provides temperature-pressure regimes under which Cr poisoning effects may be avoided.