Correlation of ohmic resistance and interfacial adhesion strength between cathode and electrolyte for solid oxide fuel cells

In this work, a quantitative correlation between the adhesion strength and the ohmic resistance at the interfaces between the electrolyte and the cathode was established. A cell consisting of LSM/YSZ/LSM was used to tune the interface adhesion strength by changing the sintering temperature. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy was used to measure the interfacial resistance. The interfacial adhesion strength was obtained by using a mechanical tensile test. The result shows that the ohmic area specific resistance decreases gradually with the increase of the adhesion strength at the interfaces and reaches a plateau at a certain value. It seems that the polarization resistance has the similar changing trends with that of the ohmic resistance. •Relation of bonding force vs. resistance at electrolyte/cathode interface was established.•An ultra-thick symmetrical structure was designed to obtain bonding strength at interface.•The relation of resistance vs. bonding force could be expressed as y=e(−ax+b)+c;a,b,c>0;a,b,c∈R.s.