Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Commons^™

Dynamic Atomistic Study Of Tunnel Functions In Nanostructured Transitional Metal Oxides, Yifei Yuan

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Alpha (α-) MnO₂ is a well know transitional metal oxide possessing one dimensional 2×2 (4.6 × 4.6 Ų) tunnels for accommodation of various ions. Such a characteristic tunneled structure has enabled the wide applications of α-MnO₂ in the fields of ion exchange, molecular sieves, biosensor, catalysis and energy storage. This PhD dissertation focuses on the dynamic study of ion transport functionality of α-MnO₂ at atomic level using an aberration corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy equipped with a special holder with a scanning tunneling microscopy probe.

The wide application of in situ TEM studying the dynamic …

Synthesis Of Titania Thin Films With Controlled Mesopore Orientation: Nanostructure For Energy Conversion And Storage, Suraj R. Nagpure

Theses and Dissertations--Chemical and Materials Engineering

This dissertation addresses the synthesis mechanism of mesoporous titania thin films with 2D Hexagonal Close Packed (HCP) cylindrical nanopores by an evaporation-induced self-assembly (EISA) method with Pluronic surfactants P123 and F127 as structure directing agents, and their applications in photovoltaics and lithium ion batteries. To provide orthogonal alignment of the pores, surface modification of substrates with crosslinked surfactant has been used to provide a chemically neutral surface. GISAXS studies show not only that aging at 4°C facilitates ordered mesostructure development, but also that aging at this temperature helps to provide orthogonal orientation of the cylindrical micelles which assemble into an …

Novel Design And Synthesis Of Structured Iron Oxides For Battery Applications, Jian Zhu

Wayne State University Dissertations

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are currently the dominant powder source for personal computers and portable electronics. LIBs also play important roles in larger-scale applications, including electric drive vehicles (EVs, HEVs) and grid-energy storage. To meet the increasing demand for energy storage, it is very urgent and crucial to develop next-generation LIBs using alternative electrode materials. For example, carbon is still exclusively used as anode materials in current LIBs. However, the theoretical capacity of graphite (372 mA h g–1 based on LiC6) has almost been achieved, and it becomes one of the bottlenecks to further increase the energy density of LIBs based …