Screen-printing technology was developed to fabricate dense YSZ electrolyte films onto NiO-YSZ porous anode substrates. A single fuel cell of Ni-YSZ/YSZ (31 mu m)/LSM-YSZ was successfully prepared by screen-printing technology. Using humidified hydrogen as fuel and ambient air as oxidant, the fuel cell provided the maximum power densities of 0.18, 0.33, 0.58, 0.97 and 1.3W/cm(2) at 650, 700, 750, 800 and 850 degrees C, respectively. The properties of the starting YSZ powder exerted a significant effect on the characteristics of the screen-printed YSZ electrolyte films. The aggregates of the powder could be partially broken by ball milling. The YSZ powder with a small particle size and a narrow particle size distribution helped to obtain dense YSZ films. The films prepared from the YSZ powder with high aggregates were very porous, which resulted in a low open circuit voltage, a high ohmic resistance, a high polarization resistance and thus a poor cell performance. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.