Continuum modeling of solid oxide fuel cell electrodes: introducing the minimum dissipation principle

A simple continuum one-dimensional model of porous mixed-conducting electrode applied onto solid oxide electrolyte is proposed and discussed. Assuming linear relationships between the reaction overpotential and current, the model makes it possible to derive analytical solutions for the electrode thickness dependence of the overall electrode resistance. The least dissipation principle is used to determine the distribution of the ionic and electronic currents throughout the mixed-conducting layer. The area-specific resistance is expressed in terms of the electron and ion resistivities of the electrode material, its “reaction resistivity” as a slope of current–overpotential dependence, and geometric parameters. The solution is expanded to describe the electrode impedance and gas transport resistance under DC conditions.     

Interfacial compatibility issues in rechargeable solid-state lithium metal batteries: a review

Solid-state lithium metal batteries(SSLBs) contain various kinds of interfaces, among which the solid electrode|solid electrolyte(ED|SE) interface plays a decisive role in the battery's power density and cycling stability. However, it is still lack of comprehensive knowledge and understanding about various interfacial physical/chemical processes so far. Although tremendous efforts have been dedicated to investigate the origin of large interfacial resistance and sluggish charge(electron/ion) transfer process, many scientific and technological challenges still remain to be clarified. In this review, we detach and discuss the critical individual challenge, including charge transfer process, chemical and electrochemical instability, space charge layers, physical contact and mechanical instability. The fundamental concepts, individual effects on the charge transfer and potential solutions are summarized based on material's thermodynamics, electrode kinetics and mechanical effects. It is anticipated that future research should focus on quantitative analysis, modeling analysis and in-situ microstructure characterizations in order to obtain an efficient manipulation about the complex interfacial behaviors in all solid-state Li batteries.     

Molecular Description of the Persulfate Ion Reduction on a Mercury Electrode

The polarization curves for the S₂O₈ ^2- electroreduction on a mercury electrode at high overvoltages and various concentrations of a surface-inactive supporting electrolyte are modeled within modern theory of charge transfer in polar media and quantum-chemical approaches. Based on an analysis of the reactant adsorption in terms of a cluster model, the conclusion is drawn that the persulfate ion is localized in the diffuse part of EDL. When calculated the current, it was assumed that the transfer of the first electron, accompanied by the bond cleavage, is the limiting stage of the total two-electron process. The integration if performed over the entire electron spectrum of the metallic electrode and an attempt is made to account for electrostatic and solvation effects on a molecular level. It is shown that the experimentally-studied overvoltage interval corresponds to the occurrence of the process near the activationless region. The increase in the current at high negative charges of the surface is due to an increase in the reaction layer thickness. This effect arises from a change in the ratio between contributions made by the reactants at the distance of closest approach and the species farther away.     

Improved charge transport in dye-sensitized solar cells employing viscous non-volatile electrolytes

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) employing a viscous non-volatile electrolyte were prepared by utilizing anatase TiO₂ nanorods (synthesized via oriented attachment) as a photoanode material. One promising way to enhance the photovoltaic performance of DSSCs employing viscous electrolytes is to increase ion conductivity by increasing the salt concentration. This is accompanied by an acceleration of the charge recombination reaction and the limiting of the overall conversion efficiency. The results showed that a TiO₂ nanorod electrode enables more favorable electron transport than a conventional nanoparticle-based electrode due to the improved electron diffusion length and the large intrinsic surface area.     

镧掺杂的二氧化锰/碳纳米管电化学超级电容器复合电极

尽管在二氧化锰/多壁碳纳米管（MnO₂/MWCNTs）上获得了较高的比电容,低电导率仍是制约MnO₂担载量或膜厚度提高的主要障碍.另一个问题是MnO₂/MWCNTs的循环稳定性远低于活性炭.所以截止到目前这一新型材料的应用仍然受到很大的限制.本文采用原位还原的方法制备镧掺杂二氧化锰/多壁碳纳米管电化学超级电容器复合电极材料.分别通过透射电镜（TEM）、扫描电镜（SEM）、X射线衍射（XRD）和傅里叶变换红外（FTIR）光谱等技术对这些复合材料的形貌与结构进行了分析.采用循环伏安法、恒电流充放电法和交流阻抗法对其进行了电化学性能的研究.研究结果表明,通过还原MnO₄^-可以在MWCNTs上形成La掺杂MnO₂复合材料.La掺杂降低了复合电极的电阻,这是因为La的引入可以增大MnO₂的晶格缺陷,从而提高材料的电导率以及电极的电化学性能.因此La掺杂是克服MnO₂本征导电性差的有效途径之一.掺杂La可以在不增大电极电阻的情况下提高MnO₂的担载量或膜厚度.La掺杂的更重要的作用是使以MnO₂/MWCNTs作电极的对称电化学超级电容器的循环性能得到显著改善.此外,La掺杂也使复合电极的比电容得到一定程度的提高.     

Surface Polarization Matters: Enhancing the Hydrogen‐Evolution Reaction by Shrinking Pt Shells in Pt–Pd–Graphene Stack Structures

Surface charge state plays an important role in tuning the catalytic performance of nanocrystals in various reactions. Herein, we report a synthetic approach to unique Pt–Pd–graphene stack structures with controllable Pt shell thickness. These unique hybrid structures allow us to correlate the Pt thickness with performance in the hydrogen‐evolution reaction (HER). The HER activity increases with a decrease in the Pt thickness, which is well explained by surface polarization mechanism as suggested by first‐principles simulations. In this hybrid system, the difference in work functions of Pt and Pd results in surface polarization on the Pt surface, tuning its charge state for hydrogen reduction. Meanwhile, the supporting graphene provides two‐dimensional channels for efficient charge transport, improving the HER activities. This work opens up possibilities of reducing Pt usage while achieving high HER performance.     

尖晶石锂锰氧化物电极首次脱锂过程的EIS研究

研究了尖晶石锂锰氧化物电极首次脱锂过程中的电化学阻抗特征. 通过选取适当的等效电路拟合实验所得的电化学阻抗谱数据, 获得了首次脱锂过程中固体电解质相界面膜(SEI膜)的电阻、电容以及电荷传递电阻、双电层电容等随电极极化电位的变化规律.     

Reducing the Charge Carrier Transport Barrier in Functionally Layer‐Graded Electrodes

Lithium‐ion batteries (LIBs) are primary energy storage devices to power consumer electronics and electric vehicles, but their capacity is dramatically decreased at ultrahigh charging/discharging rates. This mainly originates from a high Li‐ion/electron transport barrier within a traditional electrode, resulting in reaction polarization issues. To address this limitation, a functionally layer‐graded electrode was designed and fabricated to decrease the charge carrier transport barrier within the electrode. As a proof‐of‐concept, functionally layer‐graded electrodes composing of TiO₂(B) and reduced graphene oxide (RGO) exhibit a remarkable capacity of 128 mAh g⁻¹ at a high charging/discharging rate of 20 C (6.7 A g⁻¹), which is much higher than that of a traditionally homogeneous electrode (74 mAh g⁻¹) with the same composition. This is evidenced by the improvement of effective Li ion diffusivity as well as electronic conductivity in the functionally layer‐graded electrodes.     

Microstructure and electrochemical properties of porous La2NiO4+δ electrode screen-printed on Ce0.8Sm0.2O1.9 electrolyte

Superfine and uniform La₂NiO_4+δ powder was synthesized by a polyaminocarboxylate complex precursor method. La₂NiO_4+δ layers were screen-printed on dense Ce_0.8Sm_0.2O_1.9 electrolyte substrates and sintered at 900–1,100 °C. The microstructure and electrochemical properties of the resulting porous electrodes were investigated with respect to sintering temperature. The results indicate a significant effect of sintering temperature on the microstructure and electrode polarization. It was found that elevating sintering temperature was favorable to the charge transfer process whereas undesired for the oxygen surface exchange process due to an increase of the grain size. Sintering at 900 °C was determined to be preferred in terms of the polarization resistance of the electrode. The porous electrode sintered at the temperature showed a fine-grained microstructure (about 200 nm) and a relatively low polarization resistance of 0.28 Ω cm² at 800 °C. This work suggests that preparing the electrode from superfine starting powder is contributive to modifying the polarization properties.     

Secondary Electron Emission from an Organic Layer with a Surface Charge

Using secondary electron emission (SEE) techniques, conditions for the traveling of electrons near a charged surface were studied. A simple analytical expression was found to relate the effective coefficient of secondary electron emission from the charged surface of an organic liquid layer with the primary-electron current. At low currents, the relationship is close to a root law, the pattern of the dependence does not change with the varying conductivity of the liquid, its thickness, and the charge spot area. This finding suggests that the effective secondary electron emission coefficient and, hence, the conditions of electron motion near a surface charge depend on the only parameter, the current density of incident electrons. According to the estimates of the dielectric permittivity of a liquid, its resistivity, and ion mobility, the effective SEE coefficient at low charging currents is formed in the ohmic mode of current flow through the liquid.     

Energy gap law of electron transfer in nonpolar solvents

We investigate the energy gap law of electron transfer in nonpolar solvents for charge separation and charge recombination reactions. In polar solvents, the reaction coordinate is given in terms of the electrostatic potentials from solvent permanent dipoles at solutes. In nonpolar solvents, the energy fluctuation due to solvent polarization is absent, but the energy of the ion pair state changes significantly with the distance between the ions as a result of the unscreened strong Coulomb potential. The electron transfer occurs when the final state energy coincides with the initial state energy. For charge separation reactions, the initial state is a neutral pair state, and its energy changes little with the distance between the reactants, whereas the final state is an ion pair state and its energy changes significantly with the mutual distance; for charge recombination reactions, vice versa. We show that the energy gap law of electron-transfer rates in nonpolar solvents significantly depends on the type of electron transfer.     

On ion transport regulation with field-effect nonlinear electroosmosis control in microfluidics embedding an ion-selective medium

We study herein numerically the use of induced-charge electrokinetic phenomena to enable a flexible control of ion transport of dilute electrolyte in a straight ion concentration polarization system. The effect of three convection modes of induced-charge electrokinetic phenomena, including induced-charge electroosmosis, flow-field effect transistor, and alternating-current electroosmosis (ACEO), on convective arrestment of diffusive wave-front propagation is investigated by developing a cross-scale and fully coupled transient numerical simulation model, wherein multiple frequency electrochemical polarization and nonlinear diffuse charge dynamics in spatiotemporally varying solution conductivity are taken into account. We demonstrate by detailed comparative simulation studies that ACEO vortex flow field above a metal strip array arranged along the anodic chamber's bottom surface serves as the most efficient way for adjusting the salt density distribution at micrometer and even millimeter dimension, due to its high flexibility in controlling the stirring flow state with the introduction of two extra electrical parameters. The specific operating status is determined by whether the electrode array is floating in potential (induced-charge electroosmosis) or biased to ground (flow-field effect transistor) or forced to oscillate at another Fourier mode (ACEO). These results prove useful for on-chip electric current control with electroconvective stirring.     

钽在无水乙醇中的腐蚀

采用动电位极化、循环伏安、交流阻抗和扫描电镜等技术研究了钽在四乙基氯化铵（TEA）乙醇溶液中的腐蚀行为．在循环伏安曲线的扫描初期,电极表面因存在一薄层氧化物膜而使得电流密度缓慢增加．后来钝化膜因受到氯离子的攻击而被击穿,即点蚀．扫描电镜图很好地显示出蚀孔的生长过程．点蚀电位随着TEA浓度的增加而下降,随着水含量的增加而上升．在所研究的温度范围内,电化学反应的活化能为36kJ／mol．所有电极电位下的交流阻抗图谱都包含两个时间常数,钝化膜电阻和电荷传递电阻均随电极电位的增加而下降．     

New Li-ion Battery Evaluation Research Based on Thermal Property and Heat Generation Behavior of Battery

We do a new Li-ion battery evaluation research on the effects of cell resistance and polariza-tion on the energy loss in batteries based on thermal property and heat generation behavior of battery. Series of 18650 cells with different capacities and electrode materials are evalu-ated by measuring input and output energy which change with charge-discharge time and current. Based on the results of these tests, we build a model of energy loss in cells' charge-discharge process, which include Joule heat and polarization heat impact factors. It was reported that Joule heat was caused by cell resistance, which included DC-resistance and reaction resistance, and reaction resistance could not be easily obtained through routine test method. Using this new method, we can get the total resistance R and the polarization parameter η. The relationship between R, η, and temperature is also investigated in orderto build a general model for series of different Li-ion batteries, and the research can be used in the performance evaluation, state of charge prediction and the measuring of consistency of the batteries.     

三乙胺与2-氯-5-甲氧基对苯醌光电子转移反应的CIDNP研究

用化学诱导动态核极化（CIDNP）方法研究了三乙胺与2-氯-5-甲氧基对苯醌在 C6D6，CH3CN溶剂中的反应机理，实验结果表明反应过程中首先形成基态电荷转移 络合物（CTC），在CD3CN中，光照电荷分离形成离子自由基对，使三乙胺亚甲基产 生发射极化信号。同时用UV-vis实验证实CTC的存在。     

Electrochemical Impedance Analysis of Thermogalvanic Cells

Thermogalvanic cells(also known as thermo-electrochemical cells) that convert waste heat energy to electricity are a new type of energy conversion device. However, the electron transfer kinetics and mass transfer of redox couples have not been thoroughly studied. Here, the ion reaction and charge transport in thermogalvanic cells are investigated by electrochemical impedance analysis. We first propose the detailed impedance model followed experimental verification on three types of electrode materials. Parameters including kinetic rate constants and ion diffusion coefficients for the electrodes are obtained by fitting the impedance data. Our study shows explicitly that impedance analysis can provide useful information on selecting suitable electrode materials for thermogalvanic cells.     

Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy of mixed conductors under a chemical potential gradient: a case study of Pt|SDC|BSCF

The AC impedance response of mixed ionic and electronic conductors (MIECs) exposed to a chemical potential gradient is derived from first principles. In such a system, the chemical potential gradient induces a gradient in the carrier concentration. For the particular system considered, 15% samarium doped ceria (SDC15) with Ba(0.5)Sr(0.5)Co(0.8)Fe(0.2)O(3-delta) (BSCF) and Pt electrodes, the oxygen vacancy concentration is a constant under the experimental conditions and it is the electron concentration that varies. The resulting equations are mapped to an equivalent circuit that bears some resemblance to recently discussed equivalent circuit models for MIECs under uniform chemical potential conditions, but differs in that active elements, specifically, voltage-controlled current sources, occur. It is shown that from a combination of open circuit voltage measurements and AC impedance spectroscopy, it is possible to use this model to determine the oxygen partial pressure drop that occurs between the gas phase in the electrode chambers and the electrode|electrolyte interface, as well as the interfacial polarization resistance. As discussed in detail, this resistance corresponds to the slope of the interfacial polarization curve. Measurements were carried out at temperatures between 550 and 650 degrees C and oxygen partial pressure at the Pt anode ranging from 10(-29) to 10(-24) atm (attained using H(2)/H(2)O/Ar mixtures), while the cathode was exposed to either synthetic air or neat oxygen. The oxygen partial pressure drop at the anode was typically about five orders of magnitude, whereas that at the cathode was about 0.1 atm for measurements using air. Accordingly, the poor activity of the anode is responsible for a loss in open circuit voltage of about 0.22 V, whereas the cathode is responsible for only about 0.01 V, reflecting the high activity of BSCF for oxygen electro-reduction. The interfacial polarization resistance at the anode displayed dependences on oxygen partial pressure and on temperature that mimic those of the electronic resistivity of SDC15. This behavior is consistent with hydrogen electro-oxidation occurring directly on the ceria surface and electron migration being the rate-limiting step. However, the equivalent resistance implied by the oxygen partial pressure drop across the anode displayed slightly different behavior, possibly indicative of a more complex reaction pathway.     

Mathematical modeling of prolonged cycling of a porous cadmium electrode in alkaline power sources

An analysis of a computer model of a porous cadmium electrode is presented. The model describes prolonged cycling of the electrode under the alkaline battery conditions. It allows the evaluation of the dependence of the cathodic and anodic polarization on the concentration of the alkaline electrolyte, the charge and discharge current density, and the thickness and porosity of the electrode. The effect of the mass transfer of the active substance along the electrode thickness on the electrode capacity during the battery cycling can also be predicted. The calculations took into account that the cathodic and anodic processes on the cadmium electrode occurred by the liquid- and solid-state mechanisms. The diffusion, migration, and convective transport of the electrolyte components were also taken into account. An analysis of data using this model showed that it can be used in studies of the capacity of sintered cadmium electrodes under different operating conditions of nickel-cadmium batteries.     

润湿特性对超级电容器储能动力学的影响机理

润湿特性对超级电容器储能性能有着至关重要的影响。借助分子动力学模拟,本文研究了润湿特性对超级电容器储能动力学行为的影响。以石墨烯和晶体铜作为疏电解液和亲电解液电极材料。结果表明,在充电过程中,亲电解液铜电极呈现出非对称的U型微分电容曲线,负极电容是正极的～5.77倍,不同于经典双电层理论Gouy-Chapman-Stern(对称U型)和疏电解液型。该现象与离子自由能阻力分布密切相关,负极自由能阻力远小于正极(～2倍)和疏电解液电极,进而有利于强化双电层结构对电极电压的响应能力,导致更高微分电容。通过微分离子电荷密度,本文再现了微分电容演变规律,并发现改善润湿性会显著降低双电层厚度。最后,我们指出润湿性直接影响储能微观机理,将电荷储存机制从离子吸附和交换共同主导(疏电解液)转变到离子吸附主导(亲电解液)。本文所得结论揭示了润湿特性对储能动力学行为影响的原子层级机理,对超级电容器材料设计、构筑与润湿特性调控具有重要指导意义。