Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

A Bismuth Attack At Grain-Boundaries Of Ceria-Based Electrolytes, Tianrang Yang, Kevin Huang

Faculty Publications

Bismuth is a common additive of commercial silver pastes for enhancing metallization effect; silver paste is also commonly used in high-temperature electrochemical cells as a current collector or contact layer. We here report that the minor amount of bismuth in commercial silver pastes can transport to the interface of electrode/Gd-doped CeO₂ (GDC) electrolyte and seriously corrode grain-boundaries (GBs) of the GDC electrolyte, a commonly used intermediate-temperature electrolyte, causing significant ionic conductivity degradation. A comprehensive electron microscopic analysis reveals that the Bi-corrosion takes place along GBs of GDC electrolyte acting as “washing flux” agent, causing grain separation and thus blocking …