Abstract:
Fuel cells are environmentally friendly devices which need porous electrodes for its high
efficiency. In this work core-shell material based on SiC core and LSCF shell is prepared
with two different methods. In the the first method raw materials of LSCF are coated on
SiC by hydrothermal method. While in the second method SiC and LSCF are prepared
separately by hydrothermal and sol-gel method and followed by the coating of LSCF on
SiC. The Raman spectra shows the red shift in the structure which represents the change
in the SiC structure. The FTIR spectra shows the peaks of LSCF in SiC structure which
proves the formation of core-shell structures.
UV-V analysis shows the reduction of band gap of core-shell material 2.72 eV and 2.74
eV from the band gap of SiC which is 3.26 eV. Resistance and conductivity
measurements in CH4 are done from EIS spectra for both methods having conductivity
0.023 S cm-1 and 0.188 S cm-1 at temperature 550 oC. OCV measurements are done with
CH4. The highest temperature displays OCV of about 0.091 V and 0.12 V of method 1
and method 2 which also demonstrates that both methods are almost same with slight
difference, although method 1 has less OCV but it has better stability than method 2.
