Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (24) ◽  
pp. 6498
Author(s):  
Eugen Zemlyanushin ◽  
Kristina Pfeifer ◽  
Angelina Sarapulova ◽  
Martin Etter ◽  
Helmut Ehrenberg ◽  
...  

Na3Ni2BiO6 with Honeycomb structure suffers from poor cycle stability when applied as cathode material for sodium-ion batteries. Herein, the strategy to improve the stability is to substitute Ni and Bi with inactive Ti. Monoclinic Na3Ni2-xBi1-yTix+yO6 powders with different Ti content were successfully synthesized via sol gel method, and 0.3 mol of Ti was determined as a maximum concentration to obtain a phase-pure compound. A solid-solution in the system of O3-NaNi0.5Ti0.5O2 and O3-Na3Ni2BiO6 is obtained when this critical concentration is not exceeded. The capacity of the first desodiation process at 0.1 C of Na3Ni2BiO6 (~93 mAh g−1) decreases with the increasing Ti concentration to ~77 mAh g−1 for Na3Ni2Bi0.9Ti0.1O6 and to ~82 mAh g−1 for Na3Ni0.9Bi0.8Ti0.3O6, respectively. After 100 cycles at 1 C, a better electrochemical kinetics is obtained for the Ti-containing structures, where a fast diffusion effect of Na+-ions is more pronounced. As a result of in operando synchrotron radiation diffraction, during the first sodiation (O1-P3-O’3-O3) the O’3 phase, which is formed in the Na3Ni2BiO6 is fully or partly replaced by P’3 phase in the Ti substituted compounds. This leads to an improvement in the kinetics of the electrochemical process. The pathway through prismatic sites of Na+-ions in the P’3 phase seems to be more favourable than through octahedral sites of O’3 phase. Additionally, at high potential, a partial suppression of the reversible phase transition P3-O1-P3 is revealed.


1998 ◽  
Vol 520 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. D. C. Menoyo ◽  
L. Mascia ◽  
S.J. Shaw

ABSTRACTThe polyimide hybrids that have been most widely studied by the authors contain a silica phase produced from tetraethoxysilane by the sol-gel method. Despite the expected strong interactions, through H-bonds, between the polyamic acid precursor for the polyimide and the large number of hydroxyl groups from the silica phase, it is rather difficult to prevent phase separation and rapid coarsening of the morphology upon removal of the solvent from the original solution mixture. These systems can be compatibilized, however, with the selective use of functionalized trialkoxysilane coupling agents, such as glycidyl and isocyanate types.In the present work we have established that compatibilty is achieved only upon exceeding a critical concentration of coupling agent, which increases linearly with the total silica content up to a certain level. This was found to be connected with the ability of the coupling agent to displace the strongly associated solvent molecules with the amic acid units of the polymer chains in order to develop the required level of interactions across the interface between the organic and inorganic components.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Alemán ◽  
A. V. Chadwick ◽  
J. He ◽  
M. Hess ◽  
K. Horie ◽  
...  

2016 ◽  
Vol 48 (5) ◽  
pp. 629-634 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takamasa Sakai ◽  
Takuya Katashima ◽  
Takuto Matsushita ◽  
Ung-il Chung

BIBECHANA ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 80-86
Author(s):  
D. Parajuli ◽  
K. Samatha

Cu substituted Ni in Ni0.5-xCuxZn0.5Fe2O4 (x = 0, 0.05, 0.1, 0.15 and 0.2) samples and Cu substituted Zn in Ni0.5Zn0.5−xCuxFe2O4 (x = 0, 0.05, 0.1, 0.15 and 0.2) is synthesized using the sol-gel auto-combustion process. Recently, we have carried out their structural analysis using XRD and FTIR and found a cubic spinel structure. In this paper, we have studied their morphological and compositional structure with the help of a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) attached with an Energy Dispersive Spectrometer (EDS). The comparative study shows that the grain size of Cu substituted Ni is greater than Cu substituted Zn in Ni-Zn ferrite. These smaller grain-sized ferrites are preferred for many microstructural applications. Depending on the available magnetic field, sintering temperature, and atmosphere, they can have different nucleation, and hence their application mode is different. They can have a critical concentration that can tune their properties. The EDS attached with the SEM confirmed the proper composition of samples. BIBECHANA 18 (2) (2020) 80-86


Author(s):  
George C. Ruben ◽  
Merrill W. Shafer

Traditionally ceramics have been shaped from powders and densified at temperatures close to their liquid point. New processing methods using various types of sols, gels, and organometallic precursors at low temperature which enable densificatlon at elevated temperatures well below their liquidus, hold the promise of producing ceramics and glasses of controlled and reproducible properties that are highly reliable for electronic, structural, space or medical applications. Ultrastructure processing of silicon alkoxides in acid medium and mixtures of Ludox HS-40 (120Å spheres from DuPont) and Kasil (38% K2O &62% SiO2) in basic medium have been aimed at producing materials with a range of well defined pore sizes (∼20-400Å) to study physical phenomena and materials behavior in well characterized confined geometries. We have studied Pt/C surface replicas of some of these porous sol-gels prepared at temperatures below their glass transition point.


Author(s):  
V. Kaushik ◽  
P. Maniar ◽  
J. Olowolafe ◽  
R. Jones ◽  
A. Campbell ◽  
...  

Lead zirconium titanate films (Pb (Zr,Ti) O3 or PZT) are being considered for potential application as dielectric films in memory technology due to their high dielectric constants. PZT is a ferroelectric material which shows spontaneous polarizability, reversible under applied electric fields. We report herein some results of TEM studies on thin film capacitor structures containing PZT films with platinum-titanium electrodes.The wafers had a stacked structure consisting of PZT/Pt/Ti/SiO2/Si substrate as shown in Figure 1. Platinum acts as electrode material and titanium is used to overcome the problem of platinum adhesion to the oxide layer. The PZT (0/20/80) films were deposited using a sol-gel method and the structure was annealed at 650°C and 800°C for 30 min in an oxygen ambient. XTEM imaging was done at 200KV with the electron beam parallel to <110> zone axis of silicon.Figure 2 shows the PZT and Pt layers only, since the structure had a tendency to peel off at the Ti-Pt interface during TEM sample preparation.


Author(s):  
J.M. Schwartz ◽  
L.F. Francis ◽  
L.D. Schmidt ◽  
P.S. Schabes-Retchkiman

Ceramic thin films and coatings are of interest for electrical, optical, magnetic and thermal barrier applications. Critical for improved properties in thin films is the development of specific microstructures during processing. To this end, the sol-gel method is advantageous as a versatile processing route. The sol-gel process involves depositing a solution containing metalorganic or colloidal ceramic precursors onto a substrate and heating the deposited layer to form a crystalline or non-crystalline ceramic coating. This route has several advantages, including the ability to create tailored microstructures and properties, to coat large or small areas, simple or complex shapes, and to more easily prepare multicomponent ceramics. Sol-gel derived coatings are amorphous in the as-deposited state and develop their crystalline structure and microstructure during heat-treatment. We are particularly interested in studying the amorphous to crystalline transformation, because many key features of the microstructure such as grain size and grain size distribution may be linked to this transformation.


Author(s):  
P. G. Kotula ◽  
D. D. Erickson ◽  
C. B. Carter

High-resolution field-emission-gun scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) has recently emerged as an extremely powerful method for characterizing the micro- or nanostructure of materials. The development of high efficiency backscattered-electron detectors has increased the resolution attainable with backscattered-electrons to almost that attainable with secondary-electrons. This increased resolution allows backscattered-electron imaging to be utilized to study materials once possible only by TEM. In addition to providing quantitative information, such as critical dimensions, SEM is more statistically representative. That is, the amount of material that can be sampled with SEM for a given measurement is many orders of magnitude greater than that with TEM.In the present work, a Hitachi S-900 FESEM (operating at 5kV) equipped with a high-resolution backscattered electron detector, has been used to study the α-Fe2O3 enhanced or seeded solid-state phase transformations of sol-gel alumina and solid-state reactions in the NiO/α-Al2O3 system. In both cases, a thin-film cross-section approach has been developed to facilitate the investigation. Specifically, the FESEM allows transformed- or reaction-layer thicknesses along interfaces that are millimeters in length to be measured with a resolution of better than 10nm.


Author(s):  
J. Tong ◽  
L. Eyring

There is increasing interest in composites containing zirconia because of their high strength, fracture toughness, and its great influence on the chemical durability in glass. For the zirconia-silica system, monolithic glasses, fibers and coatings have been obtained. There is currently a great interest in designing zirconia-toughened alumina including exploration of the processing methods and the toughening mechanism.The possibility of forming nanocrystal composites by a phase separation method has been investigated in three systems: zirconia-alumina, zirconia-silica and zirconia-titania using HREM. The morphological observations initially suggest that the formation of nanocrystal composites by a phase separation method is possible in the zirconia-alumina and zirconia-silica systems, but impossible in the zirconia-titania system. The separation-produced grain size in silica-zirconia system is around 5 nm and is more uniform than that in the alumina-zirconia system in which the sizes of the small polyhedron grains are around 10 nm. In the titania-zirconia system, there is no obvious separation as was observed in die alumina-zirconia and silica-zirconia system.


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