Abstract
In order to achieve SOFC at reduced costs, atmospheric plasma spraying (APS) could be an attractive technique. However, it is difficult to elaborate plasma sprayed coatings with the appropriate porosity for the electrodes and full density for the electrolyte. The spray process has been adapted by providing a suspension as feedstock material. SPS shows important advantages over APS, since it is now possible to spray finer powders to obtain either a thin (10 µm) dense layer as electrolyte or thick and finely structured porous layers for the electrodes. Nevertheless some questions still remain before considering manufacturing SOFC by SPS. The major one is to understand the influence of the suspension and the injection parameters on the drops formation and transformation in plasma before impinging upon the substrate as well as of the suspension characteristics (formulation, particle size and amount, viscosity, surface tension,...). To answer these questions, suspensions based on nickel oxide (NiO) and YSZ (yttria stabilized particles) have been prepared and functional layers have been produced by SPS. This work is compared with previous studies of YSZ sprayed suspensions.
