Dysprosium doping effects on perovskite oxides for air and fuel electrodes of solid oxide cells

Abstract Solid oxide cells (SOCs) which can be operated as a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) and solid oxide electrolysis cell (SOEC) have tremendous attention as a next-generation energy device. To improve the SOCs, recently the atmospheric adaptive materials (AAMs) which can change the crystal structure by themselves to the atmosphere have been studied and reported. As an approach to develop the AAMs, the Dy doping strategy was applied to both air and fuel electrodes for SOCs with various doping amounts from 0 to 50 wt%. Among the samples, the 10% Dy doped Pr0.5Ba0.5MnO3-d shows the best improvements on the catalytic properties and electrochemical performances for both air and fuel electrode. The symmetrical cell with the 10 wt% Dy doped Pr0.5Ba0.5MnO3-d exhibits the maximum power density of 0.175 W cm−2 at 850 °C in SOFC mode and current density of −0.554 A cm−2 at 850 °C at 1.5 V in SOEC mode, respectively. The study demonstrates that the Dy doping strategy is effective on both air and fuel electrodes and is a promising approach to improve the electrochemical performances for both SOFC and SOEC.