The electrolyte in the solid oxide fuel cell must be dense enough to avoid gas leakage and thin enough to reduce the ohmic resistance. In order to manufacture the thin and dense electrolyte layer, 8 mol% $Y_2O_3$ stabilized-$ZrO_2$ (8YSZ) electrolyte layers were coated on the porous tubular substrate by the novel vacuum slurry dip-coating process. The effects of the slurry concentration, presintering temperature, and vacuum pressure on the thickness and the gas permeability of the coated electrolyte layers have been examined in the vacuum slurry coating process. The vacuum-coated electrolyte layers showed very low gas permeabilities and had thin thicknesses. The single cell with the vacuum-coated electrolyte layer indicated a good performance of $495;mW/cm^2$, 0.7 V at $700^{circ}C$. The experimental results show that the vacuum dip-coating process is an effective method to fabricate dense thin film on the porous tubular substrate.