Engineering Commons^™

Mxenes As Flow Electrodes For Capacitive Deionization Of Wastewater, Naqsh E. Mansoor

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The energy-water nexus poses an integrated research challenge, while opening up an opportunity space for the development of energy efficient technologies for water remediation. Capacitive Deionization (CDI) is an upcoming reclamation technology that uses a small applied voltage applied across electrodes to electrophoretically remove dissolved ionic impurities from wastewater streams. Similar to a supercapacitor, the ions are stored in the electric double layer of the electrodes. Reversing the polarity of applied voltage enables recovery of the removed ionic impurities, allowing for recycling and reuse. Simultaneous materials recovery and water reclamation makes CDI energy efficient and resource conservative, with potential to …

Form Stable Phase-Change Materials, Russell Dent, Marjan Kashfipour, Nitin Mehra, Jiahua Zhu

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This work investigates the use of two different polyols, xylitol (Xyl) and erythritol (Ery), in conjunction with boron nitride (BN) aerogels, for the purpose of creating thermally conductive composites. While the BN filler in Xyl composites achieved a high anisotropic thermal conductivity of up to 4.53 W/m-K at 18.2 weight percent filler loading, they do not exhibit good phase-change material qualities due to a low solidification enthalpy even at low cooling rates. Alternatively, the BN-Ery composites have shown promising results with a solidification enthalpy of 225.14 J/g and a melting enthalpy of 385.84 J/g at a heat rate of 5 …

Development Of Nanostructures By Atomic And Molecular Layer Deposition, Andrew P. Lushington

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Atomic layer deposition (ALD) is a thin film deposition technique that has a rich history of being an enabling technique. This vapor phase deposition process can produce a variety of thin films and nanostructures. ALD is based on sequential, self-limiting reactions and provides angstrom level control over film growth. Furthermore, ALD allows for conformal deposition on high-aspect ratio structures and can provide tunable film composition. As nanotechnology marches forward, the development of nanomaterials has significantly advanced. Additional functionality can be imparted to nanomaterials by using surface modification techniques. Given the advantages of ALD, this technique has become a powerful tool …

Application Of Molecular Layer Deposition For Graphite Anodes In Lithium-Ion Batteries And Porous Thin-Film Materials, Craig L. Langford

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

With climate change occurring because of greenhouse gas emissions, the demand for emission free transportation has led to the development of electric vehicles. Improving the batteries’ cycling stability, capacity and safety have been the leading challenges to compete with gasoline and diesel engines. With advances in thin-film deposition techniques via atomic and molecular layer deposition, ultrathin films can be deposited to control the surface chemistry of the battery’s active materials. This thesis aims to understand two main aspects of molecular layer deposition. First, how it can influence solid electrolyte interface formation on the graphite surface during cycling in a lithium-ion …

A High Pressure Cell For Spark Plasma Sintering, Justin Robert Carmichael

Masters Theses

Many nanostructured materials have been shown to have performance gains strongly dependent on the grain size in the material. Nanostructured thermoelectric materials for instance have found great performance increases through reduction of the grain sizes, due mostly to the scattering of phonons while retaining a good electrical conductivity. Other such examples abound where the grain size plays an important role in the performance of the material, including magnetic materials, proton fuel cell membranes, or simply improving the mechanical properties of a system through the Hall-Petch relationship.

A considerable amount of effort has been applied into reducing the grain size of …