Solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) materials

Developing materials for SOFC applications is one of the key topics in energy research. The book focuses on manganite structured materials, such as doped lanthanum chromites and lanthanum manganites, which have interesting properties: thermal and chemical stability, mixed ionic and electrical conductivity, electrocatalytic activity, magnetocaloric property and colossal magnetoresistance (CMR).
These materials have applications in solid oxide fuel cells, high temperature NOx sensors, hard disk read heads, magnetic sensors and magnetoresistive random access memories.
For the first time, the charge density distributions have been studied in these materials as synthesized by high temperature solid state reaction. Charge density analysis is helpful in understanding the physical and chemical properties of materials and in developing optimized structures. The morphological, elemental, optical and magnetic properties of the materials have also been studied.