Rheological Studies of Nickel/Scandia-Stabilized-Zirconia Screen Printing Inks for Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Anode Fabrication

Screen printing is widely used to fabricate thick film solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) electrodes, followed by drying and high temperature sintering. This study focuses on the rheology of such screen printing inks for the fabrication of porous composite anodes of nickel and scandia‐ stabilized zirconia. Inks with 1–3 wt% binder were suitable for screen printing, but inks with higher binder content were tacky and difficult to print. The particle network strength, important to the production of films with good particle connectivity and mechanical strength, increased as the binder content increased. Inks having 3 wt% binder showed the best balance of thixotropic and viscoelastic properties, resulting in printable films with minimum numbers of film defects and are therefore recommended from this study, with the texanol ink appearing to be better than terpineol due its minimum number of film defects.