Porous, robust highly conducting Ni-YSZ thin film anodes prepared by magnetron sputtering at oblique angles for application as anodes and buffer layers in solid oxide fuel cells

Uniform, highly porous, columnar thin films incorporating YSZ and NiO prepared by magnetron sputtering with deposition at glancing incidence exhibited stoichiometries close to that of the Y-Zr-Ni sputter target. Characterization by means of SEM, XRD, XPS and RBS revealed that the uniformly distributed nickel component in the as-deposited films consisted of NiO, and that the…