In-situ Young's moduli of the constitutive layers in a solid oxide fuel cell

In-situ Young's moduli of thin constituent layers of a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) are needed to estimate the mechanical reliability of the fuel cell unit. Because a robust technique to measure the same is not available, an improved methodology is proposed to determine the in-situ Young's moduli of thin ceramic layers of a substrate-supported SOFC. The measured Young's moduli of the constituent layers were found to be close to those of corresponding bulk materials using the resonant ultrasound spectroscopy (RUS) technique but were different from the values obtained using nanoindentation.