Opportunity

Improving the activity and durability of solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) electrodes requires electrocatalyst architectures that remain nanoscale, uniformly distributed and resistant to coarsening under high-temperature operation. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) and West Virginia University (WVU) established an atomic layer deposition (ALD) method that forms a controlled multilayer electrocatalyst structure directly on porous electrode backbones. The process begins with an ALD layer of discrete nanoparticles of the first electrocatalyst, followed by one or more ALD layers containing the second electrocatalyst. These stacked layers create a composite nanostructure that stabilizes catalyst particle size and increases active site density during oxygen reduction. Because ALD provides conformal coating throughout the porous network, electrocatalyst loading can be minimized while preserving accessibility to gas pathways and ionic transport. The resulting electrodes maintain performance at temperatures above 650oC, where conventional infiltrated catalysts typically agglomerate. This technology is available for licensing and/or further collaborative research from NETL in collaboration with WVU.