Numerous preparation techniques for perovskite-based MIEC materials have been developed over the last years. Apart from the conventional methods of cathode preparation, including high temperature calcination, mechanical grinding of powders, screen printing and sintering of thick fi lm layers, alternative synthesis and deposition routes are available. Nanocrystalline LSC or La 1−x Sr x Co 1−y Fe y O 3− δ thin fi lms on electrolyte substrates were already fabricated by pulsed laser deposition, [6][7][8][9] DC, and RF sputtering, [ 10,11 ] spray pyrolysis, [ 12 ] and sol-gel deposition. [13][14][15][16][17] In this work the chemical and structural properties and the stability of nanoscaled La 0.6 Sr 0.4 CoO 3− δ LSC thin fi lm cathodes on polycrystalline Gd 0.1 Ce 0.9 O 1.95 (CGO) substrates were investigated thoroughly. The fabrication by a low-temperature sol-gel technique is favorable for tailoring the grain size, porosity and cathode-fi lm thickness. [ 18 ] The electrochemical properties of the nanoscaled LSC thin fi lm cathodes were already reported by Hayd et al. who presented an outstanding electrochemical performance and extraordinary low area specifi c resistances as low as ASR chem = 0.023 Ω cm 2 at an operating temperature of 600 ° C. [ 19,20 ] Interestingly enough, theoretical models predicted ASR chem values up to one order of magnitude larger than the experimental data. For obvious reasons, the excellent performance of our nanoscaled cathodes does not solely depend on microstructure (porosity, increased inner surface area) as reported in previous work, [ 21 ] but presumably on the enhanced catalytic properties of the La 0.6 Sr 0.4 CoO 3− δ . However, the outstanding electrochemical performance motivates the analysis of the microstructure and phase composition of the LSC cathodes presented in this work.The nanoscaled LSC thin-fi lm cathodes were studied by transmission and scanning transmission electron microscopy (TEM/STEM) combined with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDXS). Moreover, high-angle annular dark-fi eld (HAADF) STEM tomography was used to study the distribution of the pores and quantify the porosity, which was not reported for nanoscaled (La,Sr)CoO 3 -based materials in literature before. Although several techniques like μ -tomography, [ 22 ] FIB-tomography, [ 23,24 ] transmission X-ray microscope based X-ray tomography, [ 12 , 25 ] mercury intrusion, [ 22 , 26 ] nitrogen adsorption, [ 27 ] or the Archimedes method [ 22 , 28 ]