PNNL

Abstract

Ferritic stainless steels are promising candidates for interconnect applications in low- and mid-temperature solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs). A couple of issues however remain for the particular application, including the chromium poisoning due to chromia evaporation, and long-term surface and electrical stability of the scale grown on these steels. Application of a manganese colbaltite spinel protection layer on the steels appears to be an effective approach to solve the issues. For an optimized performance, Mn1+xCo2-xO4 (-1?x?2) spinels were investigated against properties relative for protection coating applications on ferritic SOFC interconnects. Overall it appears that the spinels with x around 0.5 demonstrate a good CTE match to ceramic cell components, a relative high electrical conductivity, and a good thermal stability up to 1,250oC. This was confirmed by a long-term test on the Mn1.5Co1.5O4 protection layer that was thermally grown on Crofer22 APU, indicating the spinel protection layer not only significantly decreased the contact resistance between a LSF cathode and the stainless steel interconnects, but also inhibited the sub-scale growth on the stainless steels.