Low cost interconnects with highly improved contact strength for SOC application

The overall objective of LOWCOST-IC is to contribute to the successful upscaling and widespread commercialization of Solid Oxide Cell (SOC) technology by:
1) Increasing the robustness and lifetime of SOC stacks
- Novel contact layers, based on a reactive oxidative bonding concept, will increase the mechanical fracture energy of the cell-interconnect contact by > 200 % compared to state of the art
- Highly protective coatings on the interconnect will reduce the Ohmic resistance
- Novel interconnect designs will reduce the maximum stress by > 30 % in the cell-interconnect interface, while maintaining a low pressure drop (< 30 mbar)
- Stable operation with the new contact layers and coated interconnects will be demonstrated for > 3000 hours and 50 cycles in multiple 1 kW stacks

2) Minimizing the interconnect development and production costs:
- Cheaper high-volume steel grades will reduce the interconnect raw material cost by > 80 %.
- State-of-the-art large-scale roll-to-roll manufacturing methods will be used for both interconnect coating and shaping, and a fast drop-on-demand (DoD) printing technology will be used for application of the contact layer.
- A flexible and cost-effective interconnect development route with design iteration cost < 10 % of state of the art will be demonstrated by applying computationally highly efficient SOC stack models for designing the interconnect and hydroforming for shaping.