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.

In order to achieve Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFC) with reduced costs, the atmospheric plasma spray process (APS) could be an attractive technique. However, it is difficult to produce 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 or a powder as feedstock material combined with optimized spray conditions to manufacture SOFC layers with required compositions, microstructures and properties. Suspensions or powders were injected in a plasma jet originating from a conventional torch (F4) implementing external devices. By using optimized suspensions of nickel oxide (NiO) and yttria stabilized zirconia (YSZ) in ethanol, porous anodes have been produced with thicknesses around 50 µm. By the same way aqueous suspensions of yttria stabilized zirconia (YSZ) powders have been prepared to achieve a fine layer as electrolyte to produce the first half cells and the porous cathode layers based on lanthanum strontium manganite (La 0.8 Sr 0.2 MnO 3 or LSM) have been manufactured by conventional atmospheric plasma spraying of powders.

The suspension plasma spraying using a liquid as material feedstock is a promising technique to elaborate thin and nanostructured coatings. This work deals with the study of suspensions in order to obtain specific microstructural coatings. The slurries were prepared starting from nanosized titania powders. Distilled water and alcohol were used as solvents and appropriate dispersing agents were employed to stabilize the suspensions. An external injection system that ensures the atomisation and radial injection of the suspension into Ar-H 2 plasma under atmospheric conditions was designed. The coatings were characterized by scanning electron microscopy and differences in the microstructure of the deposits were observed. Efforts were made to understand the relationship between liquid feedstock properties, injection/plasma parameters and coatings microstructural characteristics.

In order to achieve SOFC with reduced costs, the atmospheric plasma spray process (APS) could be an attractive technique. To obtain dense layer as electrolyte, the route has been adapted by providing a suspension as feedstock material. Suspensions of yttria stabilized zirconia powders in methanol have been prepared with various solid loadings and states of dispersion. An external injection system was used to ensure the atomisation and radial injection of the suspension into the Ar-H 2 plasma under atmospheric conditions. The coatings were characterized by SEM, Archimedes porosity and differences in the microstructure of the deposits were observed. The aim of this work has thus been to study the influence of various parameters (of the suspensions, plasma, torch, injection) on the layer morphology. For this purpose, the atomization has been investigated and efforts have been made to understand relationships between suspension properties, atomization and microstructure.