Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Meduri, Praveen.
An anode material for lithium-ion batteries is provided that comprises an elongated core structure capable of forming an alloy with lithium; and a plurality of nanostructures placed on a surface of the core structure, with each nanostructure being capable of forming an alloy with lithium and spaced at a predetermined distance from adjacent nanostructures.
Electrochemical performance of the existing state-of-the art capacitors is not very high, key scientific barrier is that its charge storage mechanism wholly depends on adsorption of electrolyte on electrode. We present a novel method for the synthesis of nitrogen -doped porous carbons and address the drawback by precisely controlling composition and surface area. Nitrogen-doped porous carbon was synthesized using a self-sacrificial template technique without any additional nitrogen and carbon sources. They exhibited exceptionally high capacitance (239 Fg-1) due to additional pseudocapacitance originating from doped nitrogen. Cycling tests showed no obvious capacitance decay even after 10,000 cycles, which meets the requirement of commercial supercapacitors. Our method is simple and highly efficient for the production of large quantities of nitrogen-doped porous carbons.
In the present study, we used FGS[5] as the substrate and implemented low temperature (<=150 oC) direct fluorination on graphene sheets. The fluorine content has been modulated to investigate the formation mechanism of different functional groups such as C-F, CF2, O-CF2 and (C=O)F during the fluorination process. The detailed structure and chemical bonds were simulated theoretically and quantified experimentally by using density function theory (DFT) calculations and NMR techniques, respectively. The adjustable power/energy ratio from fluorinated graphene as cathode for primary lithium batteries is also discussed. From a combination of NMR spectroscopy and theoretical calculation, we conclude that the topological defects without oxygen containing groups provide most of the reactive sites to react with F. FGS also contain a small number of COOH groups which contribute for the fluorination reaction. Hydroxyl or epoxy groups contribute to another fraction of the reaction products.
The structural and electrochemical properties of fluorinated graphene have been investigated by using a series of graphene fluorides (CFx, x=0.47, 0.66, 0.89). Fluorinated graphene exhibited high capacity retentions of 75-81% of theoretical capacity at moderate rates as cathode materials for primary lithium batteries. Specifically, CF0.47 maintained a capacity of 356 mAhg-1 at a 5C rate, superior to that of traditional fluorinated graphite. The discharged graphene fluorides also provide an electrochemical tool to probe the chemical bonding on the parent graphene substrate.
Li-S battery is a complicated system with many challenges existing before its final market penetration. While most of the reported work for Li-S batteries is focused on the cathode design, we demonstrate in this work that the anode consumption accelerated by corrosive polysulfide solution also critically determines the Li-S cell performance. To validate this hypothesis, ionic liquid (IL) N-methyl-N-butylpyrrolidinium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide (Py14TFSI) has been employed to modify the properties of SEI layer formed on Li metal surface in Li-S batteries. It is found that the IL-enhanced passivation film on the lithium anode surface exhibits much different morphology and chemical compositions, effectively protecting lithium metal from continuous attack by soluble polysulfides. Therefore, both cell impedance and the irreversible consumption of polysulfides on lithium metal are reduced. As a result, the Coulombic efficiency and the cycling stability of Li-S batteries have been greatly improved. After 120 cycles, Li-S battery cycled in the electrolyte containing IL demonstrates a high capacity retention of 94.3% at 0.1 C rate. These results unveil another important failure mechanism for Li-S batteries and shin the light on the new approaches to improve Li-S battery performances.