The effects of zinc modification methods on membrane sintering, electrical conductivity of BaZr(0.4)Ce(0.4)Y(0.2)O(3-delta) (BZCY4) and the thermo-mechanical match of the BZCY4 electrolyte with anode were systematically investigated. Three modification methods are pursued, including the physical mixing of BZCY4 with a ZnO solid (method 1), introducing zinc during the solution stage of the sal-gel synthesis (method 2) and doping zinc into a perovskite lattice by synthesis of a new compound with a nominal composition of BaZr(0.4)Ce(0.4)Y(0.16)Zn(0.04)O(3-delta) (method 3). Method 1 turned out to be the most effective at reducing the sintering temperature, which can mainly be attributed to a reactive sintering although ZnO doping into the BZCY4 lattice also facilitates the sintering. While all three modification methods facilitated the membrane sintering, only the electrolyte from method 3 had similar shrinkage behavior to the anode. An anode-supported thin-film BZCY4-3 electrolyte solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) was successfully fabricated, and the fuel cell delivered an attractive performance with a peak power density of similar to 307 mW cm(-2) at 700 degrees C. (C) 2010 Professor T. Nejat Veziroglu. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.