Composites for Energy Applications: Materials for Renewable Energy Applications 2022: Electrochemical Storage and Conversion
Sponsored by: TMS Structural Materials Division, TMS: Composite Materials Committee
Program Organizers: Patrick Ward, Savannah River National Laboratory; Joseph Teprovich, California State University Northridge; Anthony Thompson, Savannah River National Laboratory; Simona Hunyadi Murph, Savannah River National Laboratory
Wednesday 2:00 PM
March 2, 2022
Room: 210D
Location: Anaheim Convention Center
Session Chair: Joseph Teprovich, California State University Northridge
2:00 PM Invited
Co-infiltration of Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Anodes with Ni/Mixed Ionic and Electronic Conducting Catalyst Nanoparticles: Soumendra Basu1; Jillian Rix1; Srikanth Gopalan1; Uday Pal1; 1Boston University
The hydrogen oxidation reaction occurs at the triple phase boundaries (TPBs) of Ni/YSZ (cermet) solid oxide fuel cell anodes. Infiltrated Ni nanoparticles deposited on the YSZ phase can create additional TPBs. However, the Ni nanoparticles need to have an electronically conducting pathway to the percolated Ni grains in the cermet anode for the additional TPBs to be active. Co-infiltration of Ni with a mixed ionic and electronic conducting (MIEC) phase such as gadolinium doped ceria (GDC) can lead to a composite microstructure of infiltrated phases, that can activate a majority of the additional TPBs. Quantitative microstructural analysis of the infiltrated phases will be related to changes in I-V response of the cells, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) will be used to gain insights into changes in the reaction mechanisms occurring in the infiltrated cells.
2:30 PM Invited
Aperiodic Three-dimensional Tricontinuous Conductor-insulator-conductor Nanocomposite for Use as High Energy Density Nanocapacitor: Eric Detsi1; Samuel Welborn1; John Corsi1; Jeff DeHosson2; 1University of Pennsylvania; 2University of Groningen
The development of three-dimensional (3D) aperiodic energy storage devices is in part impeded by the lack of appropriate aperiodic templates which can withstand the thermal conditions required to deposit energy storage materials within their void space. In this talk, the feasibility of an aperiodic three-dimensional architecture for energy storage is demonstrated by constructing a tricontinuous conductor-insulator-conductor (CIC) nanocapacitor on an aperiodic nanoporous gold scaffold aided by in situ small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and atomic layer deposition (ALD) techniques. Current-voltage characteristics and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy measurements revealed that this 3D CIC outperformed its 2D counterpart by ~4x in terms of capacitance. This proof-of-concept nanocomposite will pave the way to the development of aperiodic 3D storage systems with enhanced energy and power densities [1]. Reference: [1] S.S. Welborn, S. van der Meer, J.S. Corsi, J.T.M. De Hosson and E. DetsiACS Applied Materials & Interfaces 13 (2021).
3:00 PM
Genetic Manipulation of M13 Bacteriophage for Enhancing the Efficiency of Virus-inoculated Perovskite Solar Cells with a Certified Efficiency of 22.3%: Il Jeon1; 1Pusan National University
Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are considered one of the most promising solar energy harvesters because of their high power conversion efficiency (PCE). To increase their PCE even further, additives are used; however, some of these additives pose certain disadvantages. Therefore, the nature-inspired ecofriendly M13 bacteriophage is genetically engineered to maximize its performance as a perovskite crystal growth template and as a passivator for PSCs. The genetic manipulation of the M13 bacteriophage enhances the Lewis coordination between the perovskite materials and virus by amplifying a designated amino acid group. Among the 20 types of amino acids, lysine (Lys or K) exhibits the strongest interaction with the perovskites. The K-type M13 virus-inoculated PSCs yield a PCE of 23.6% in the laboratory. When taken to a national laboratory for verification, this device exhibits a certified forward-and-reverse-bias-combined efficiency (22.3%), which is one of the highest efficiencies reported among biomaterial-based PSCs.
3:20 PM Break
3:40 PM Invited
Nanocomposites for Gel and Solid Polymer Electrolytes in Lithium Batteries: Reza Shahbazian-Yassar1; 1University Of Illinois At Chicago
This presentation provides an overview on the PI's efforts on synthesis, characterization and electrochemical behavior of gel and solid polymer electrolytes. In the first part, I will demonstrate our studies on the utilization of phosphorene-reinforced PEO gel polymer electrolytes that was tested against Li metal. Our studies show that phosphorene is effective in trapping the anions leading to facile hoping of Li ions in the electrolyte and at the electrolyte-electrode interfaces. In another study, we showed that the utilization of two-dimensional boron nitride (BN) materials in solid polymer electrolytes (PEO and PVdF) can alleviate some of the concerns related to hot spot formation in batteries leading to safer design of next generation Li metal batteries.
4:10 PM
NOW ON-DEMAND ONLY - Polymer Templating Method for the Formation of Hierarchically Porous Nitrogen-rich Tin-carbon Composite Anodes: Jason Weeks1; 1University of Texas at Austin
This study aims to provide a new platform for the fabrication of metal-carbon composites. Herein we show that the high density crosslinking of a polymer can be used to homogenously trap metal nanoparticles and other components. Carbon nitride is employed to act as a nitrogen dopant source and textural template for the final product. We have shown that this method provides an avenue for the tunable fabrication of nitrogen-rich porous composites. Composites with a variety of different nitrogen moieties and textural compositions were electrochemically analyzed using LIB based systems. Electrochemical and post-mortem analysis of these composite materials suggest the superior electrochemical performance can be attributed to the unique nitrogen-doped carbon framework, which is able to buffer the large volumetric expansion of the tin due to its disordered flexible nature whilst contributing to the overall capacity of the composite from its high degree of nitrogen doping (~11.9 at %).