Three Dimensional Reconstruction of Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Electrodes Using Focused Ion Beam - Scanning Electron Microscopy

Abstract

Solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) electrodes typically consist of contiguous electronically and ionically conducting solid phases in an interconnected porous structure. Quantitatively analyzing this microstructure remains a key challenge in connecting materials processing with electrode performance. This paper will describe the application of dual-beam focused ion beam - scanning electron microscopy for three-dimensional reconstruction of Ni-YSZ cermet anodes, LSM-YSZ cathodes, and (La,Sr)CoO3 cathodes. Different methods for segmentation, i.e. converting images to 3D data sets, are compared and the tradeoff between calculation accuracy and analysis time is discussed.