During the last decade metal-supported solid oxide fuel cells (MSCs) have attained increasing interest for electrical power supply in mobile applications, e.g. in so called "auxiliary power units" (APUs), especially for diesel-powered heavy trucks. Compared with anode-supported cells (ASCs), which are primarily world-wide seen for those application, this cell technology promises significant advantages, for example, an increased resistance against mechanical and thermal stresses, re-oxidation tolerance and a significant potential for material cost reduction. Based on a powder-metallurgically manufactured (P/M) porous substrate, that consists of the well-known P/M FeCr-ITM-alloy, Plansee pursues to establish its own industrial fabrication to offer customers high performance metal-supported cells and "ready to stack"-components. By using thin P/M interconnector sheets, Plansee's latest concept of metal-supported cells allows to build-up stacks with significantly reduced weight, an increased cell performance and the ability to meet the cost requirements for cell, repeat unit, and stack. Benefiting from a strong cooperation with Forschungszentrum Julich and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)-in the scope of the NextGen MSC-Project (financially supported by the German Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi))-a novel cell configuration for an industrialized manufacturing route could be developed and characterized successfully. At present, a first pilot fabrication for this novel cell configuration has been established at Plansee. The paper gives an overview about the cell development process as well as about the manufacturing route for cost effective metalsupported cells and repeat-units.
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