Kinetic Studies on Ni-YSZ Composite Electrodes

AC and DC techniques were applied to investigate the electrochemical reaction kinetics of porous composite Ni/8-mol% yttria-stabilized zirconia (Ni/8YSZ) solid oxide cell (SOC) electrodes using a novel pseudo-3-electrode cell geometry. From OCV impedance spectra an activation energy Ea of 1.13 eV, prefactor yan of 3.7·105·T, hydrogen and steam partial pressure dependencies a and b respectively of -0.07 and 0.22 were determined.

DC current density vs. overpotential curves compared with those predicted using the determined kinetic parameters. Apparent Butler-Volmer charge transfer coefficients α were determined from the current density vs. overpotential curves. Values ranging from 0.57 at 650°C to 0.64 at 850°C were determined from the anodic branch and 0.85 to 0.81 from the cathodic branch in the same range, with higher fitting accuracy in the anodic branch.

The lower fitting accuracy of the cathodic branch and the need for different α values for each branch suggests that a simple BV model of the measured electrode kinetics is insufficient and/or different reaction mechanisms might be occurring in anodic vs cathodic polarization.