The researchers at the Korea Institute of Energy Research (President Kim Jong-nam) have improved the performance of solid oxide fuel cells by more than two times without using expensive materials such as platinum but an ultrasonic dispersion wet penetration method.

So far, in order to improve the oxygen reduction reaction that oxygen introduced from the outside meets electrons, many researches have used a wet penetration method in which a catalyst is dissolved in a solution and added to the cathode layer. In this method, the size of added liquid droplet was larger than 1㎜, and the catalyst was condensed on the surface of the cathode so it prevented oxygen from flowing in thereby reduced the performance.

In order to overcome this, the research team has developed an ultrasonic spraying infiltration technique. The ultrasonic spraying infiltration process is capable of applying a quantitatively uniform catalyst layer by using an ultrasonic device that can reduce the size of a liquid droplet in units of micrometers (about 10-5m) to add by fine shaking.

The ultrasonic spraying infiltration method is suitable for SOFC cell area, and also for commercialization as it can form a new nano-catalyst functional layer on not only newly developed cells but also existing cells. Therefore, the research team said that the nano-catalyst layer grown with the same crystal structure can be used as an important research result for improving SOFC performance in the future.

The result of this research was published in the 『Journal of Materials Chemistry A, IF: 11.301.』