Corrosion study of ceria protective layer deposited by spray pyrolysis on steel interconnects

Single fuel cells and electrolysis cells are assembled into stacks using interconnects in order to increase power and gas production capacity. The most common choice for the interconnect material is stainless steel. It has good electrical and mechanical properties and is also cost effective. One of the problems when using steel is the formation of a thermally grown oxide scale during use which has a lower electrical conductivity than the steel.

In order to slow down oxide scale growth, protective layers on both sides of the interconnect can be applied. Ceria seems to be a reasonable choice for the hydrogen side. In this paper ceria is fabricated and evaluated as a protective layer for stainless steel interconnects. The influence of ceria layer thickness on scale formation and composition is investigated.