High energy density, low cost and environmental friendliness are the advantages of lithium-sulfur (Li-S) battery which is regarded as a promising device for electrochemical energy storage systems. As one of the important ingredients in Li-S battery, the binder greatly affects the battery performance. However, the conventional binder has some drawbacks such as poor capability of absorbing hydrop...

Title of Thesis: FABRICATION AND MEASUREMENT OF CESIATED METAL PHOTOCATHODES Nathan A. Moody, Master of Science, 2004 Thesis Directed By: Professor Patrick O’Shea Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering A requirement for accelerator applications such as free electron lasers is a high current, high quality electron beam. This is achieved using a photoinjector, where a drive laser modul...

Current microbial desalination cell (MDC) performances are evaluated with chemical catalysts such as ferricyanide, platinum catalyzed air-cathodes or aerated cathodes. All of these methods improve power generation potential in MDCs, however, they are not preferable for large scale applications due to cost, energy and environmental toxicity issues. In this study, performance of microbial desalin...

In polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs), because the reaction rate in the cathode is slower than that in the anode, the cathode catalyst layers require more catalyst loading than the anodes [1]. Much research has been focused on improving the catalytic activity in cathodes and simultaneously reducing the amount of Pt supported by carbon black, which is the most commonly used cathode...

Several types of calorimetric cell designs were used in attempts to measure excess enthalpy during the electrolysis of LiOD/D2O using palladium cathodes. Control experiments were run by using light water in place of D2O or by using platinum cathodes in place of palladium. Initial experiments using thin palladium cathodes of an unknown purity gave no significant differences between the Pd/D2O ce...

The spontaneous electrical polarization of ferroelectric materials can be changed either by reversal or by phase transition from a ferroelectric into a non-ferroelectric state or vice versa. If spontaneous polarization changes are induced with fast heat, mechanical pressure, laser or electric field pulses on a submicrosecond time scale, strong uncompensated surface charge densities and related ...

Here, we demonstrate a strategy to produce high areal loading and areal capacity sulfur cathodes by using vapor-phase infiltration of low-density carbon nanotube (CNT) foams preformed by solution processing and freeze-drying. Vapor-phase capillary infiltration of sulfur into preformed and binder-free low-density CNT foams leads to a mass loading of ∼79 wt % arising from interior filling and coa...

Microbial electrolysis cells (MECs) provide a high-yield method for producing hydrogen from renewable biomass. One challenge for commercialization of the technology is a lowcost and highly efficient cathode. Stainless steel (SS) is very inexpensive, and cathodes made of this material with high specific surface areas can achieve performance similar to carbon cathodes containing a platinum cataly...

Electrodeposition of poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) onto conducting plastic allows the cheap and facile synthesis of plastic cathodes for dye-sensitised solar cells, having excellent solar cell efficiency (8%), at a fraction of the cost of platinised plastic.

Developing high-performance batteries relies on material breakthroughs. During the past few years, various in situ characterization tools have been developed and have become indispensible in studying and the eventual optimization of battery materials. However, soft X-ray spectroscopy, one of the most sensitive probes of electronic states, has been mainly limited to ex situ experiments for batte...