Abstract
Solid oxide cells (SOCs) efficiently interconvert chemicals and electricity. However, they are primarily confined to 2D design and fabrication technologies. Planar SOC stacks require complex multi-material components, leading to reduced compactness and high specific weight. Here we escape the 2D paradigm and adopt a true 3D design based on triply periodic minimal surface structures, enabling superior performance on gravimetric and volumetric bases. Leveraging the resolution and accuracy of additive manufacturing, we demonstrate a monolithic, gyroidal SOC that eliminates the need for metallic interconnects and sealing components. The monolith achieves optimal spatial utilization, exceptional mass-specific indexes, a straightforward manufacturing procedure and high electrochemical and thermomechanical stability. The specific power and volumetric power density surpass 1 W g−1 and 3 W cm−3 in fuel cell mode, and the mass-index and volume-index hydrogen production rates are about 7 × 10−4 Nm3 h−1 g−1 and 2 × 10−3 Nm3 h−1 cm−3 in electrolysis mode, nearly an order of magnitude enhancement compared to planar stacks.
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All relevant data for this work can be found in the paper and Supplementary Information. A detailed overview of the data and plots are available at https://doi.org/10.11583/DTU.28153061. Source data are provided with this paper.
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge DTU colleagues H. Henriksen, R. Caldogno, A. Danielak, C. Grundlach, S. Baier, S. Wang, B. Liu, L. Knudsen and E. Abdellahi for their assistance with equipment training and experiments. We acknowledge the financial support from the China Scholarship Council (grant number 202006370033, Z.Z. and V.E.), the Danish national VILLUM P2X Accelerator Program (grant number VPX-08, V.E., Z.Z., V.K.N. and D.B.P.) and the Poul Due Jensen Foundation for funding the project titled ‘Open Additive Manufacturing Initiative’ (grant number 2018-017, V.K.N. and D.B.P.) for supporting this research.
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Conceptualization: V.E. and Z.Z. Methodology: Z.Z., V.E. and V.K.N. Investigation: Z.Z., A.R.L., Z.P., P.S., Y.X., Y.S., A.B., N.S., M.A., V.K.N. and J.L.N. Visualization: Z.Z., A.R.L., Z.P., V.B.T., Y.S., V.K.N. and V.E. Funding acquisition: Z.Z., V.K.N., D.B.P. and V.E. Project administration: V.E. Supervision: V.E. and V.K.N. Writing—original draft: Z.Z., V.E., P.S., V.K.N. and V.B.T. Writing—review and editing: Z.Z., V.E., V.B.T., X.S., P.S., V.K.N. and all. Resources: P.S., Y.X., A.B., P.K. and M.C.
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Nature Energy thanks Yanhai Du, Inyoung Jang and the other, anonymous, reviewer for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
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Zhou, Z., Lalwani, A.R., Sun, X. et al. Monolithic gyroidal solid oxide cells by additive manufacturing. Nat Energy 10, 962–970 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-025-01811-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-025-01811-y
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