A review on new cobalt-free cathode materials for reversible solid oxide fuel cells

The exponential growth in the requirement of fuel cells and batteries leads to increased demand for cobalt due to its common use in high-performance Li-ion batteries and high-temperature fuel cells/electrolyzers. This sharp increment in demand raises concern about the availability of limited reserves of cobalt which can impact the price of cobalt. Moreover, the geographic limitations of cobalt resources may endanger the whole supply chain. In addition to all those, huge moral issues of cobalt mining are also another problem. Hence, leading battery, fuel cells and electrolyzer manufacturers are looking for sustainable alternatives to reduce cobalt dependency. A more specific limitation is shown in Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFCs) cathode materials that contain cobalt. Incompatibilities have already been observed between the cathode materials containing cobalt and the electrolytes in terms of the thermal expansion coefficient mismatch during the transition of the operating temperature from high to low. An advantage of low operating temperatures is the reduction of material costs compared to high temperature. Increasing the electrochemical performance of the cell and eliminating thermal expansion coefficient difference problems are in concert aimed at the development of cobalt-free cathode materials. Therefore, cobalt-free cathode materials are vital for the sustainability of SOFCs and green transition of the energy sector since they can be used as cathode and anode material in symmetrical SOFCs which is also known as reversible SOFC (RSOFC). In this review, we comprehensively summarize the recent advances of cobalt-free perovskite cathode materials for intermediate temperature RSOFCs.