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Real-time studies of battery electrochemical reactions inside a transmission electron microscope

Sullivan, John P.; Huang, Jian Y.; Leung, Kevin L.; Fan, Hongyou F.; Liu, Xiaohua L.; Hudak, Nicholas H.

We report the development of new experimental capabilities and ab initio modeling for real-time studies of Li-ion battery electrochemical reactions. We developed three capabilities for in-situ transmission electron microscopy (TEM) studies: a capability that uses a nanomanipulator inside the TEM to assemble electrochemical cells with ionic liquid or solid state electrolytes, a capability that uses on-chip assembly of battery components on to TEM-compatible multi-electrode arrays, and a capability that uses a TEM-compatible sealed electrochemical cell that we developed for performing in-situ TEM using volatile battery electrolytes. These capabilities were used to understand lithiation mechanisms in nanoscale battery materials, including SnO{sub 2}, Si, Ge, Al, ZnO, and MnO{sub 2}. The modeling approaches used ab initio molecular dynamics to understand early stages of ethylene carbonate reduction on lithiated-graphite and lithium surfaces and constrained density functional theory to understand ethylene carbonate reduction on passivated electrode surfaces.

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TYPE SAND Report YEAR 2012
OSTIDOI

Computational and experimental platform for understanding and optimizing water flux and salt rejection in nanoporous membranes

Rogers, David M.; Leung, Kevin L.; Brinker, C.J.; Singh, Seema S.; Merson, John A.

Affordable clean water is both a global and a national security issue as lack of it can cause death, disease, and international tension. Furthermore, efficient water filtration reduces the demand for energy, another national issue. The best current solution to clean water lies in reverse osmosis (RO) membranes that remove salts from water with applied pressure, but widely used polymeric membrane technology is energy intensive and produces water depleted in useful electrolytes. Furthermore incremental improvements, based on engineering solutions rather than new materials, have yielded only modest gains in performance over the last 25 years. We have pursued a creative and innovative new approach to membrane design and development for cheap desalination membranes by approaching the problem at the molecular level of pore design. Our inspiration comes from natural biological channels, which permit faster water transport than current reverse osmosis membranes and selectively pass healthy ions. Aiming for an order-of-magnitude improvement over mature polymer technology carries significant inherent risks. The success of our fundamental research effort lies in our exploiting, extending, and integrating recent advances by our team in theory, modeling, nano-fabrication and platform development. A combined theoretical and experimental platform has been developed to understand the interplay between water flux and ion rejection in precisely-defined nano-channels. Our innovative functionalization of solid state nanoporous membranes with organic protein-mimetic polymers achieves 3-fold improvement in water flux over commercial RO membranes and has yielded a pending patent and industrial interest. Our success has generated useful contributions to energy storage, nanoscience, and membrane technology research and development important for national health and prosperity.

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TYPE SAND Report YEAR 2010
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Results 101–125 of 154
Results 101–125 of 154