The present research concerns an electrodeposited cobalt-tungsten alloy coating on graphite fibers. Annealed and unannealed coated fibers were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy/energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (SEM/EDS), x-ray diffraction (XRD), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The mole fraction of tungsten in the as-deposited cobalt-tungsten coating was found to be (7.10 ...

The efficiency of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) is limited largely by sluggish oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) kinetics, even when promoted by Pt-based alloy nanoparticles (NPs). Acid-leached Pt alloys such as “Pt3Co” have shown considerably higher specific (2−5 times) and mass (2 to 3 times) ORR activity than Pt NPs. However, the specific activity enhancement of “Pt3Co” NPs decr...

Density functional theory calculations are carried out to study CO adsorption on the (001) surface of a LaNi(5) hydrogen storage alloy. At low coverages, CO favors adsorption on Ni-Ni bridge sites. With an increase in CO coverage, the decrease in the adsorption energy is much larger for Ni-Ni-CO bridge adsorption than that for Ni-CO on-top adsorption. Thus, the latter sites in the relatively st...

A series of PtM (M=Co, Ni)/reduced graphene oxide (rG-O) nanocomposites were successfully synthesized through a facile hydrothermal method. The as-synthesized nanocomposites were characterized using transmission electron microscopy and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometer, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscop...

Methanol steam reforming is a promising reaction in terms of hydrogen production for use in PEM fuel cells. Catalyst research has focused mainly on Cu/ZnO formulations, because of their superior selectivity to CO2 and H2. The common byproduct CO is problematic due to its poisoning effect on the anode of a downstream fuel cell. Some years ago it was shown that palladium supported on certain redu...

Modeling structural and mechanical properties of intermetallic compounds and alloys requires detailed knowledge of their interatomic interactions. The first two papers of this series @Phys. Rev. B 56, 7905 ~1997!; 58, 8967 ~1998!# derived first-principles interatomic potentials for transition-metal ~TM! aluminides using generalized pseudopotential theory ~GPT!. Those papers focused on binary al...

Functional plating such as alloys or dispersion coatings have been widely used in metal finishing industry. In general, dispersion coatings are deposited from plating baths containing suspended particles such as metal oxides, carbides, metals or organic materials,(l-3) Codeposited particles in the dispersion coatings have the remarkable influence on the properties of the deposits depending on t...

Thermal stability and the kinetics of the grain growth of nano-crystalline Mg-6Al-1Zn-1Si alloy prepared via mechanical alloying (MA) were investigated. It started with elemental powders, using a variety of analytical techniques including differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), X-ray diffraction method (XRD), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) coupled with energy dispersive spectrometry (E...