A first-principles study on divergent reactions of using a Sr3Fe2O7 cathode in both oxygen ion conducting and proton conducting solid oxide fuel cells

Wenzhou Tan; Daoming Huan; Wenqiang Yang; Nai Shi; Wanhua Wang; Ranran Peng; Xiaojun Wu; Yalin Lu

doi:10.1039/c8ra04059a

A first-principles study on divergent reactions of using a Sr₃Fe₂O₇ cathode in both oxygen ion conducting and proton conducting solid oxide fuel cells

RSC Adv. 2018 Jul 25;8(47):26448-26460. doi: 10.1039/c8ra04059a. eCollection 2018 Jul 24.

Authors

Wenzhou Tan¹, Daoming Huan¹, Wenqiang Yang¹, Nai Shi¹, Wanhua Wang¹, Ranran Peng¹, Xiaojun Wu¹, Yalin Lu^{1

2

3

4}

Affiliations

¹ CAS Key Laboratory of Materials for Energy Conversion, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China Hefei 230026 Anhui China pengrr@ustc.edu.cn yllu@ustc.edu.cn.
² Synergetic Innovation Center of Quantum Information & Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China Hefei Anhui 230026 China.
³ Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, University of Science and Technology of China Hefei 230026 P. R. China.
⁴ Hefei National Laboratory of Physical Science at the Microscale, University of Science and Technology of China Hefei 230026 Anhui China.

Abstract

Exploring mechanisms for sluggish cathode reactions is of great importance for solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs), which will benefit the development of suitable cathode materials and then accelerate cathode reaction rates. Moreover, possible reaction mechanisms for one cathode should be different when operating in oxygen ion conducting SOFCs (O-SOFC) and in proton conducting SOFCs (P-SOFCs), and therefore, they lead to different reaction rates. In this work, a Ruddlesden-Popper (R-P) oxide, Sr₃Fe₂O₇ (SFO), was selected as a promising cathode for both O-SOFCs and P-SOFCs. Using the first-principles approach, a microscopic understanding of the O₂ reactions over this cathode surface was investigated operating in both cells. Compared with La_0.5Sr_0.5Co_0.25Fe_0.75O₃ (LSCF), the low formation energies of oxygen vacancies and low migration energy barriers for oxygen ions in SFO make oxygen conduction more preferable which is essential for cathode reactions in O-SOFCs. Nevertheless, a large energy barrier (2.28 eV) is predicted for oxygen dissociation reaction over the SFO (001) surface, while there is a zero barrier over the LSCF (001) surface. This result clearly indicates that SFO shows a weaker activity toward the oxygen reduction, which may be due to the low surface energies and the specific R-P structure. Interestingly, in P-SOFCs, the presence of protons on the SFO (001) surface can largely depress the energy barriers to around 1.46-1.58 eV. Moreover, surface protons benefit the oxygen adsorption and dissociation over the SFO (001) surface. This result together with the extremely low formation energies and migration energy barriers for protons seem to suggest that SFO could work more effectively in P-SOFCs than in O-SOFCs. It's also suggested that too many protons at the SFO surface will lead to high energy barriers for the water formation process, and thus that over-ranging steam concentrations in the testing atmosphere may have a negative effect on cell performances. Our study firstly and clearly presents the different energy barriers for one cathode performing in both O- and P-SOFCs according to their different working mechanisms. The results will be helpful to find the constraints for using cathodes toward oxygen reduction reactions, and to develop effective oxide cathode materials for SOFCs.