Ultrafast high-temperature sintering of gadolinia-doped ceria

Ultrafast high-temperature sintering (UHS) is a rapidly growing research area of material science and engineering. Herein we present UHS of gadolinia-doped ceria (GDC) powders in single and multi-step approaches. The sintered ceramics were characterized from a physical and electrochemical point of view. When the power is applied gradually during the multistep UHS process crack-free GDC ceramics can be obtained with 95 % bulk density using commercial powder. Oxalate converted GDC powder gave 86 % bulk density with the same multistep sintering process. Additionally, it is shown that multistep UHS is also suitable for multilayer cosintering necessary for solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC), as demonstrated by the production of dense GDC electrolyte in tight contact with porous electrodes.