HOT EES Communication
Solid oxide fuel cells have the potential to be used to generate energy from hydrocarbon fuels. However, they currently require very high operating temperatures, for example to allow oxygen reduction at the SOFC cathode to take place.
Designing a catalyst which can allow this reaction to proceed at much lower temperature is a key goal of SOFC research. Now Dane Morgan and co-workers have identified parameters – the bulk oxygen p-band or the bulk
oxygen vacancy formation energy – which are key to the activity of such catalysts.
They suggest that these descriptors could be used to design SOFCs with optimised properties in the future.
Read this exciting Energy and Environmental Science research:
Prediction of solid oxide fuel cell cathode activity with first-principles descriptors
Yueh-Lin Lee, Jesper Kleis, Jan Rossmeisl, Yang Shao-Horn and Dane Morgan
Energy Environ. Sci., 2011