Single Step and Continuous Synthesis of Advanced Lithium Ion Positive Electrode Material Powders using Microwave Plasma Process
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Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Holman, Richard.
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Embodiments described herein relate generally to electrochemical cells having high rate capability, and more particularly to devices, systems and methods of producing high capacity and high rate capability batteries having relatively thick semi-solid electrodes. In some embodiments, an electrochemical cell includes an anode and a semi-solid cathode. The semi-solid cathode includes a suspension of an active material of about 35% to about 75% by volume of an active material and about 0.5% to about 8% by volume of a conductive material in a non-aqueous liquid electrolyte. An ion-permeable membrane is disposed between the anode and the semi-solid cathode. The semi-solid cathode has a thickness of about 250 μm to about 2,000 μm, and the electrochemical cell has an area specific capacity of at least about 7 mAh/cm2 at a C-rate of C/4. In some embodiments, the semi-solid cathode slurry has a mixing index of at least about 0.9.
Nambu-Goldstone modes are sensitive to the effects of physics at energies comparable to the scale of spontaneous symmetry breaking. We show that as a consequence of this the global texture proposal for structure formation requires rather severe assumptions about the nature of physics at the Planck scale.
The existence of structure on large (100 Mpc) scales, and limits to anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR), have imperiled models of structure formation based solely upon the standard cold dark matter scenario. Novel scenarios, which may be compatible with large scale structure and small CMBR anisotropies, invoke nonlinear fluctuations in the density appearing after recombination, accomplished via the use of late time phase transitions involving ultralow mass scalar bosons. Herein, the statistical mechanics are studied of such phase transitions in several models involving naturally ultralow mass pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone bosons (pNGB's). These models can exhibit several interesting effects at high temperature, which is believed to be the most general possibilities for pNGB's.
It is likely that extended inflation is followed by an epoch of slowroll inflation. Such a sequence of events may lead to a very interesting perturbation spectrum with significant power on the scale of the transition between the extended and slowroll phase, superimposed upon a power-law spectrum with deviations from the Harrison-Zeldovich slope. Normalization of the spectra above and below the transition scale is expected to differ.
A new extended inflationary scenario evading the difficulties of the original model is discussed. The model can thermalize the energy in the bubble walls by the necessary epoch, and establish a Robertson-Walker frame in the bubble clusters. The essential new ingredient in the model is the observation that the coupling of the inflaton to the Jordan-Brans-Dicke field is expected to be different from that of visible matter.
False-vacuum decay was studied in context of generalized extended inflationary theories, and the bubble nucleation rates was computed for these theories in the limit of G(sub N) yields 0. It was found that the time dependence of the nucleation rate can be exponentially strong through the time dependence of the Jordan-Brans-Dicke field. This can have a pronounced effect on whether extended inflation can be successfully implemented.
The possibility is considered that higher dimensional theories may, upon reduction to four dimensions, allow extended inflation to occur. Two separate models are analayzed. One is a very simple toy model consisting of higher dimensional gravity coupled to a scalar field whose potential allows for a first-order phase transition. The other is a more sophisticated model incorporating the effects of non-trivial field configurations (monopole, Casimir, and fermion bilinear condensate effects) that yield a non-trivial potential for the radius of the internal space. It was found that extended inflation does not occur in these models. It was also found that the bubble nucleation rate in these theories is time dependent unlike the case in the original version of extended inflation.
The bubble nucleation rate in a first-order phase transition taking place in a background Jordan-Brans-Dicke cosmology is examined. The leading order terms in the nucleation rate when the Jordan-Brans-Dicke field is large (i.e., late times) are computed by means of a Weyl rescaling of the fields in the theory. It is found that despite the fact that the Jordan-Brans-Dicke field (hence the effective gravitational constant) has a time dependence in the false vacuum at late times the nucleation rate is time independent.
Wilson-loop symmetry breaking is considered on a space-time of the form M4 x K, where M4 is a four-dimensional space-time and K is an internal space with nontrivial and finite fundamental group. It is shown in a simple model that the different vacua obtained by breaking a non-Abelian gauge group by Wilson loops are separated in the space of gauge potentials by a finite energy barrier. An interpolating gauge configuration is then constructed between these vacua and shown to have minimum energy. Finally some implications of this construction are discussed.