Journal of Materials Chemistry
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Journal of Materials Chemistry
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Chemistry of Materials
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Chemistry of Materials
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This report summarizes the findings of a five-month LDRD project funded through Sandia's NTM Investment Area. The project was aimed at providing the foundation for the development of advanced functional materials through the application of ultrathin coatings of microporous or mesoporous materials onto the surface of substrates such as silicon wafers. Prior art teaches that layers of microporous materials such as zeolites may be applied as, e.g., sensor platforms or gas separation membranes. These layers, however, are typically several microns to several hundred microns thick. For many potential applications, vast improvements in the response of a device could be realized if the thickness of the porous layer were reduced to tens of nanometers. However, a basic understanding of how to synthesize or fabricate such ultra-thin layers is lacking. This report describes traditional and novel approaches to the growth of layers of microporous materials on silicon wafers. The novel approaches include reduction of the quantity of nutrients available to grow the zeolite layer through minimization of solution volume, and reaction of organic base (template) with thermally-oxidized silicon wafers under a steam atmosphere to generate ultra-thin layers of zeolite MFI.
Our ability to field useful, nano-enabled microsystems that capitalize on recent advances in sensor technology is severely limited by the energy density of available power sources. The catalytic nanodiode (reported by Somorjai's group at Berkeley in 2005) was potentially an alternative revolutionary source of micropower. Their first reports claimed that a sizable fraction of the chemical energy may be harvested via hot electrons (a 'chemicurrent') that are created by the catalytic chemical reaction. We fabricated and tested Pt/GaN nanodiodes, which eventually produced currents up to several microamps. Our best reaction yields (electrons/CO{sub 2}) were on the order of 10{sup -3}; well below the 75% values first reported by Somorjai (we note they have also been unable to reproduce their early results). Over the course of this Project we have determined that the whole concept of 'chemicurrent', in fact, may be an illusion. Our results conclusively demonstrate that the current measured from our nanodiodes is derived from a thermoelectric voltage; we have found no credible evidence for true chemicurrent. Unfortunately this means that the catalytic nanodiode has no future as a micropower source.
Chemistry of Materials
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The Sunshine to Petrol effort at Sandia aims to convert carbon dioxide and water to precursors for liquid hydrocarbon fuels using concentrated solar power. Significant advances have been made in the field of solar thermochemical CO{sub 2}-splitting technologies utilizing yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ)-supported ferrite composites. Conceptually, such materials work via the basic redox reactions: Fe{sub 3}O{sub 4} {yields} 3FeO + 0.5O{sub 2} (Thermal reduction, >1350 C) and 3FeO + CO{sub 2} {yields} Fe{sub 3}O{sub 4} + CO (CO{sub 2}-splitting oxidation, <1200 C). There has been limited fundamental characterization of the ferrite-based materials at the high temperatures and conditions present in these cycles. A systematic study of these composites is underway in an effort to begin to elucidate microstructure, structure-property relationships, and the role of the support on redox behavior under high-temperature reducing and oxidizing environments. In this paper the synthesis, structural characterization (including scanning electron microscopy and room temperature and in-situ x-ray diffraction), and thermogravimetric analysis of YSZ-supported ferrites will be reported.
The Sunshine to Petrol effort at Sandia aims to convert carbon dioxide and water to precursors for liquid hydrocarbon fuels using concentrated solar power. Significant advances have been made in the field of solar thermochemical CO{sub 2}-splitting technologies utilizing yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ)-supported ferrite composites. Conceptually, such materials work via the basic redox reactions: Fe{sub 3}O{sub 4} {yields} 3FeO + 0.5O{sub 2} (Thermal reduction, >1350 C) and 3FeO + CO{sub 2} {yields} Fe{sub 3}O{sub 4} + CO (CO{sub 2}-splitting oxidation, <1200 C). There has been limited fundamental characterization of the ferrite-based materials at the high temperatures and conditions present in these cycles. A systematic study of these composites is underway in an effort to begin to elucidate microstructure, structure-property relationships, and the role of the support on redox behavior under high-temperature reducing and oxidizing environments. In this paper the synthesis, structural characterization (including scanning electron microscopy and room temperature and in-situ x-ray diffraction), and thermogravimetric analysis of YSZ-supported ferrites will be reported.
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American Ceramics Society Transactions
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Hydrogen and carbon monoxide may be produced using solar-thermal energy in two-stage reactions of water and carbon dioxide, respectively, over certain metal oxide materials. The most active materials observed experimentally for these processes are complex mixtures of ferrite and zirconia based solids, and it is not clear how far the ferrites, the zirconia, or a solid solution between the two participate in the change of oxidation state during the cycling. Identification of the key phases in the redox material that enable splitting is of paramount importance to developing a working model of the materials. A three-pronged approach was adopted here: computer modeling to determine thermodynamically favorable materials compositions, bench reactor testing to evaluate materials’ performance, and in-situ characterization of reactive materials to follow phase changes and identify the phases active for splitting. For the characterization and performance evaluation thrusts, cobalt ferrites were prepared by co-precipitation followed by annealing at 1400 °C. An in-situ X-ray diffraction capability was developed and tested, allowing phase monitoring in real time during thermochemical redox cycling. Key observations made for an un-supported cobalt ferrite include: 1) ferrite phases partially reduce to wustite upon heating to 1400 °C in helium; 2) exposing the material to air at 1100 °C causes immediate re-oxidation; 3) the re-oxidized material may be thermally reduced at 1400 °C under inert; 4) exposure of a reduced material to CO2 results in gradual re-oxidation at 1100 °C, but minimization of background O2-levels is essential; 5) even after several redox cycles, the lattice parameters of the ferrites remain constant, indicating that irreversible phase separation does not occur, at least over the first five cycles; 6) substituting chemical (hydrogen) reduction for thermal reduction resulted in formation of a CoFe metallic alloy. Materials were also evaluated for their CO2-splitting performance in bench reactor systems utilizing chemical reduction in place of thermal reduction. These tests lead to the following general conclusions: 1) despite over-reduction of the cobalt ferrite phase to CoFe alloy on chemical reduction, splitting of CO2 still occurs; 2) the kinetics of chemical reduction follow the sequence: un-supported < ZrO2-supported < yttria-stabilized ZrO2 (YSZ)-supported ferrite; 3) ferrite/YSZ re-oxidizes faster than ferrite/ZrO2 under CO2 in the range 400 – 700 °C. The temperature and pressure regimes in which the thermal reduction and water-splitting steps are thermodynamically favorable in terms of the enthalpy and entropy of oxide reduction, were determined. These metrics represent a useful design goal for any proposed water-splitting cycle. Applying this theoretical framework to available thermodynamic data, it was shown that none of the 105 binary oxide redox couples that were screened possess both energetically favorable reduction and oxidation steps. However, several driving forces, including low pressure and a large positive solid-state entropy of reduction of the oxide, have the potential to enable thermodynamically-favored two-step cycles.
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