Jane Banner¹, Srikanth Gopalan¹; ¹Boston University

There is a critical demand for air-independent advanced electric power sources with high density energy storage to replace batteries in unmanned undersea vehicles. Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) have the potential to meet this demand provided that they operate under pure pressurized oxygen. Rare-earth nickelate oxides are presently being investigated as cathode materials for these SOFCs because of their layered Ruddlesden-Popper structure which allows for oxygen hyperstoichiometry through the formation of interstitials. These interstitials mediate the oxygen reduction reaction. Therefore, these materials could be advantageous in high oxygen partial pressure environments because oxygen interstitial concentration increases with increasing oxygen partial pressure. However, nickelates are known to be unstable in the presence of ceria barrier layers. This study focuses on stabilizing nickelate compositions and testing their performance on anode-supported single cells. The performance of the cells at various cathode-side oxygen partial pressures and temperatures is analyzed using a suitable electrochemical model.