Functional Nanomaterials 2020: Translating Innovation into Pioneering Technologies: Translating Innovation into Pioneering Technologies I
Sponsored by: TMS Functional Materials Division, TMS: Nanomaterials Committee
Program Organizers: Simona Hunyadi Murph, Savannah River National Laboratory; Huanyu Cheng, Pennsylvania State University; Yong Lin Kong, University of Utah; Min-Kyu Song, Washington State University; Ning Zhang, Baylor University

Monday 8:00 AM
February 24, 2020
Room: Point Loma
Location: Marriott Marquis Hotel

Session Chair: Min-Kyu Song, Washington State University; Nasrin Hooshmand, Georgia Tech


8:00 AM  Invited
Nano-carbon Materials for Advanced Energy Storage: Cengiz Ozkan1; 1University of California, Riverside
    Hierarchical three dimensional graphene-carbon nanotube hybrid materials possess ultra large surface area, tunability, mechanical durability and high conductivity which are appealing to diverse energy storage systems. Integration of nanostructured pseudocapacitive metal oxides to such 3D hierarchical templates provides superior electrochemical performance. Among the high performance capacitor systems developed includes MGM (graphene-MWNT-Manganese oxide) and RGM (graphene-MWNT-Ruthenium oxide) hybrid systems. High specific/areal capacitance and extended operational voltage window provides exceptionally high energy density and power density. Similar three-dimensional templates are transformed into cone-shaped carbon nanotube clusters decorated with amorphous silicon for lithium ion battery anodes (SCCC), by depositing amorphous silicon onto the mesoporous nano-carbon templates via magnetron sputtering. The seamless connection between silicon decorated CNT cones and the graphene substrate facilitates charge transfer and provides a binder-free technique for preparing lithium ion battery anodes. Lithium ion batteries based on the SCCC architecture demonstrated ultra-fast charging, high reversible capacity and excellent cycling stability.

8:20 AM  Invited
Design Nanostructured Anode Materials for Li-/Na-ion Batteries: Xiaolin Li1; Haiping Jia1; Jiguang Zhang1; David Reed1; Vincent Sprenkle1; 1Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
    To improve energy density and cycling stability of Li-/Na-ion batteries, several nanostructured materials including porous Si and yolk-shell structured Sb@C have been designed as high-performance anodes. For Li-ion batteries, mesoporous Si sponge have controlled porosity and pore size, which limit the particle volume expansion at full lithiation to ~30% and prevent bulk particle pulverization. The anodes deliver a specific capacity of ~750 mAh/g and >80% capacity retention over 1,000 cycles. The electrodes (~1.5 mAh/cm2) demonstrated ~92% retention over 300 cycles. The composite electrodes of porous Si and graphite (~3 mAh/cm2) with a specific capacity of ~650 mAh/g demonstrate ~82% retention over 450 cycles. For Na-ion batteries, The Sb@C yolk-shell structure can accommodate the Sb swelling upon sodiation and improve the structural/electrical integrity against pulverization. It delivers a high specific capacity of ~554 mAh/g, good rate capability (315 mhA/g at 10C rate) and long cyclability (92% capacity retention over 200 cycles).

8:40 AM  Invited
Development of Solid-State Li/Sulfur-Selenium as Safe and High Capacity Batteries: James Wu1; 1Nasa Glenn Research Center
    NASA future missions demand safe, high specific energy (>400 Wh/kg) batteries. Current SOA lithium-ion batteries is unable to meet NASA’s future energy goals. There are intense on-going development activities to increase battery energy density. Lithium/sulfur is a promising battery chemistry to achieve high energy density due to its exceptional high theoretical energy density (2567 Wh/kg). However, their development is hindered by rapid capacity fade, and safety and reliability on Li metal anode cycling. To solve these obstacles, selenium is introduced into sulfur cathode to improve the electronic and ionic conductivities, and ultimately improve sulfur cathode utilization. Using solid state or solid polymer nanocomposite electrolyte is a promising approach to make Li metal safely cycling and help to mitigate the “polysulfide shuttling” issue. In this presentation, the research activities on sulfur/selenium cathode development and integration with solid state electrolyte will be presented, and the progress and results will be also discussed.

9:00 AM  Invited
Interfacial Engineering of Energy Conversion and Storage Materials Using Atomic Layer Deposition: Robin Rodríguez1; Tae Cho1; M. Ravandi1; William LePage1; Mihaela Banu1; M. D. Thouless1; Neil Dasgupta1; 1University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
    Nanomaterials offer several advantages for energy conversion and storage devices including high surface areas, short transport distances, and tunable material properties. However, the ability to precisely control the properties of surfaces and heterogeneous interfaces limits the performance of many applications. To address these challenges, my research group applies Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) for the atomically-precise modification of surfaces and interfaces to control energy, charge, and mass transfer processes across physical and chemical boundaries. ALD allows for precise control of interactions at heterogeneous interfaces, which can be used to tune the optical, electronic, thermal, and mass transport properties of integrated material systems. In this talk, I will demonstrate examples of the ALD process for modification of electrode-electrolyte interfaces with an emphasis on “beyond Li-ion” batteries and solar-to-fuel conversion, and provide a perspective on the design and manufacturing of material systems at length scales ranging from atoms to meters.

9:20 AM Break

9:40 AM  Invited
Multi-modal, Multi-length-scale Characterization of Composition Graded Ni-rich Layered Oxide Cathode Materials: Seongmin Bak1; Xiao-Qing Yang1; Youngho Shin2; 1Brookhaven National Laboratory; 2Argonne National Laboratory
    To overcome the above drawbacks of Ni-rich layered cathode, the concentration gradient Ni-rich layered oxide (CG-NCM) which is compositionally graded material by placing Ni-rich composition in the particle center, and Mn-rich composition at the particle surface has been proposed. CG-NCM cathode materials stabilize the structure and enable utilize higher Ni-content NCM series to increase capacity without compromising cycle life and safety. Although there are many studies reported about the improvement of the battery performance with this unique concept of the cathode, there is still a lack of information to be needed for further development of CG-NCM. Our recent result of CG-NCM study by using combining X-ray imaging and spectroscopy techniques shows a more comprehensive understanding of how the compositional gradient structure works to stabilize the Ni-rich NCM. More details will be discussed at the conference.

10:00 AM  Invited
Graphene Coating on Ni-rich Cathode Materials to Improve Energy Density of Electrode for Lithium-ion Battery: Young-Jun Kim1; Chang-Won Park1; Jung-Hun Lee1; Soo-Min Hwang1; 1Sungkyunkwan University
    Over the last few decades, layered cathode materials (e.g., LiMO2, M=transition metals) have been widely used for commercial lithium-ion batteries(LIBs). The specific capacity of layered oxide materials can be improved by increasing the Ni concentration and with high content of Ni (Ni ≥ 80%), a reversible capacity of 200mAh/g or more can be achieved. Despite benefits and research into Ni-rich layered cathode materials, they still suffer from thermal and structural instabilities. These induce significant dissolution of the transition metals and oxygen evolution during operation at elevated temperatures, leading to rapid capacity fading during cycling. To resolve the current problems associated with Ni-rich layered cathode materials, we developed a simple graphene coating process, which effectively prevent the dissolution of transition metals during operation and/or storage at elevated temperature. Furthermore, graphene coating significantly increase energy density of cathode by removing conducting agents from cathode.

10:20 AM  Invited
2D Materials for Energy Storage Applications: Reza Shahbazian-Yassar1; 1University of Illinois at Chicago
    Two dimensional (2D) materials are emerging materials for innovative design of Li-ion batteries that are safe and high energy density. This presentation encompass recent progress in the PI's research team on addressing the Li-ion battery challenges via 2D materials design and integration. I first showcase a Li-metal case where graphene oxide (GO) materials were used to control the deposition of Li-metal ions during charge and discharge reactions. We demonstrated high cycling performance of Li-metal cell modified with GO in comparison to typical Li-metal cells. In another work, we studied the electrochemical cycling of Li storage in phosphorene 2D materials and showed interesting structural ordering during Li insertion in these materials and remarkable fast ion diffusion across phosphorene. Moreover, we show that the encapsulation of cathode particles with 2D materials can be an innovative approach to suppress the oxygen release in the high voltage cathodes.

10:40 AM  
Metal–organic Frameworks for Lithium–oxygen Batteries with Enhanced Cycling Performance: Xiahui Zhang1; Panpan Dong1; Younghwan Cha1; Min-Kyu Song1; 1School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, Washington State University
    Lithium–oxygen (Li–O2) batteries have the potential to deliver 3–5 times higher specific energy than that of conventional Li-ion batteries, but they still suffer from critical challenges such as low energy efficiency and short cycle life. Such challenges are mainly caused by the parasitic reactions between cell components and reactive oxygen species during cycling, which need to be suppressed to achieve long cycle life. Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) are an emerging type of highly porous materials and have been widely studied in catalysis and energy storage due to their large surface area and unsaturated metal sites. Recently, our group reported a MOF-based cathode for Li–O2 batteries with mitigated parasitic reactions and thus enhanced cycling performance (Energy Storage Mater. 2019, 17, 167-177). Herein, we present the rational design of MOFs for Li–O2 batteries and mechanistic studies on the enhanced battery performance using in-situ and ex-situ characterization tools.

11:00 AM  Invited
Engineered Si/SiOx Nanocomposites for Lithium Ion Battery: Hansu Kim1; 1Hanyang University
    Si has gained much attention as a promising anode material for lithium ion batteries because of its high theoretical capacity of 3,580 mAh g-1. Indeed, intensive research efforts have been devoted to find a proper nanostructure and composition to exploit the full potential of Si as an anode material. Thus far, the important concerns associated with the practical implementation of Si anode are to discover a feasible way to effectively suppress huge volume expansion of Si (~300%) caused by alloying reaction with lithium, and to develop scalable process for mass production of Si based anode materials. The presentation will focus on our recent works involving the development of various nanostructured Si-SiOx materials as high capacity lithium storage material prepared by sol-gel reaction based scalable process.