Highlights

• •Ultrafast high-temperature sintering was used to prepare Gd-doped ceria ceramics.
• •Single and multi-step sintering cycles were developed to improve the final compacts.
• •Electrochemical performance of the final ceramics was studied.
• •Co-sintering of SOFC layered systems by UHS was successfully developed.

Abstract

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 co-sintering necessary for solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC), as demonstrated by the production of dense GDC electrolyte in tight contact with porous electrodes.