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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 217 records · Page 12
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2019

Carbon-encapsulated niobium carbonitride with high volumetric capacitance and wide potential windows in aqueous pseudocapacitors

Electrochemical capacitors deliver high power and have long operational lives; yet, their energy densities are limited. Compared to carbon-based electrical double-layer capacitors, pseudocapacitors with an aqueous electrolyte are predicated to provide both high gravimetric and volumetric capacitance while being cost-effective and eco-friendly. However, their narrow operational potential windows limit the practical delivery of energy. In this study, we synthesized novel NbCxN1-x nanoparticles encapsulated in a uniform carbon layer. This pseudocapacitive material exhibits a high volumetric capacitance, a wide potential window stability (~345 F cm –3 , 2.1 V, in 1 M of Li 2 SO 4 ), and a long cycling life (>10 000 cycles). Moreover, the symmetric cells (2.2 V, in 1 M of Li 2 SO 4 ) exhibit high energy density as well as excellent cyclability and rate performances. These results offer new chances for the design of aqueous energy storage devices having a wide applied potential difference and excellent performance.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2019

Energy transfer for storage or recovery in capacitive deionization using a DC-DC converter

Energy recovery from capacitive deionization (CDI) has the potential to increase overall desalination efficiency. We here define the storage (one-way) and utilization (round-trip) efficiencies between a CDI cell and an energy storage device using a generic direct current/direct current (DC/DC) converter circuit. Presented is a closed-form analytical model for the case of a supercapacitor (SC) as the energy storage device and a buck-boost converter as the DC/DC converter. The model is benchmarked with a numerical model, showing good agreement. Also presented is a comparison among energy transfer methods wherein desalination productivity is fixed. For constant current operation, this condition requires higher currents to compensate for the inactive time introduced by the converter. For fixed productivity, the mean current of the converter circuit approaches the constant current value for higher initial voltages and lower capacitances in the supercapacitor. Finally, we show the effect of relevant parameters of the SC in the storage and utilization efficiency. The model predicts storage and utilization efficiencies of at least 90% for an initial voltage of 1 V or higher and reasonable CDI and SC parameters. Finally, we provide engineering operational parameters to maximize the efficiency of energy transfer and guidance in the selection of electronic components.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
DOE OSTI2017

Tunnel structured manganese oxide nanowires as redox active electrodes for hybrid capacitive deionization

We report that hybrid capacitive deionization (HCDI), which combines a capacitive carbon electrode and a redox active electrode in a single device, has emerged as a promising method for water desalination, enabling higher ion removal capacity than devices containing two carbon electrodes. However, to date, the desalination performance of few redox active materials has been reported. For the first time, we present the electrochemical behavior of manganese oxide nanowires with four different tunnel crystal structures as faradaic electrodes in HCDI cells. Two of these phases are square tunnel structured manganese oxides, α-MnO 2 and todorokite-MnO 2 . The other two phases have novel structures that cross-sectional scanning transmission electron microscopy analysis revealed to have ordered and disordered combinations of structural tunnels with different dimensions. The ion removal performance of the nanowires was evaluated not only in NaCl solution, which is traditionally used in laboratory experiments, but also in KCl and MgCl 2 solutions, providing better understanding of the behavior of these materials for desalination of brackish water that contains multiple cation species. High ion removal capacities (as large as 27.8 mg g -1 , 44.4 mg g -1 , and 43.1 mg g -1 in NaCl, KCl, and MgCl 2 solutions, respectively) and high ion removal rates (as large as 0.112 mg g -1 s -1 , 0.165 mg g -1 s -1 , and 0.164 mg g -1 s -1 in NaCl, KCl, and MgCl 2 solutions, respectively) were achieved. By comparing ion removal capacity to structural tunnel size, it was found that smaller tunnels do not favor the removal of cations with larger hydrated radii, and more efficient removal of larger hydrated cations can be achieved by utilizing manganese oxides with larger structural tunnels. Extended HCDI cycling and ex situ X-ray diffraction analysis revealed the excellent stability of the manganese oxide electrodes in repeated ion removal/ion release cycles, and compositional analysis of the electrodes indicated that ion removal is achieved through both surface redox reactions and intercalation of ions into the structural tunnels. In conclusion, this work contributes to the understanding of the behavior of faradaic materials in electrochemical water desalination and elucidates the relationship between the electrode material crystal structure and the ion removal capacity/ion removal rate in various salt solutions.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2020

Capacitive deionization using carbon derived from an array of zeolitic-imidazolate frameworks

Capacitive deionization (CDI) represents one of the most thermodynamically efficient technologies for brackish water desalination. Its performance is highly reliant on the surface properties of carbon-based electrodes. Zeolitic-imidazolate framework (ZIF)-derived carbon materials have emerged among the most promising candidates owing to their high structural and compositional tuneability. However, the impacts of the precursory ZIF structure on the properties of the final carbon, and therefore, CDI capacity and efficiency remain to be further explored. In this work, four Zn-based ZIFs with different side-chain substitutions on the imidazolates were synthesized on a gram scale with high yields to produce N-doped carbons by pyrolysis. Next, the resulting carbons along with four commercial carbon blacks were characterized physically and electrochemically to explore the structure-performance relationship. We demonstrated that the imidazole side-chain substitution alters the ZIF's decomposition during pyrolysis, influencing the elemental compositions, surface properties, wettability and graphitization levels. The diverse carbon properties result in variable double layer capacitance and charge-transfer resistance, ultimately impacting the CDI performance. Among these carbons, Zn (4abIm)2-C afforded the greatest salt adsorption capacity of 14.19 mg NaCl $·g_C^{–1}$, while Zn (mIm) 2 -C showed the highest overall salt adsorption capacity and rate; both exceeded the performance of the commercial carbon blacks.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2017

An Ideal Electrode Material, 3D Surface-Microporous Graphene for Supercapacitors with Ultrahigh Areal Capacitance

The efficient charge accumulation of an ideal supercapacitor electrode requires abundant micropores and its fast electrolyte-ions transport prefers meso/macropores. But, current electrode materials cannot meet both requirements, resulting in poor performance. We creatively constructed three-dimensional cabbage-coral-like graphene as an ideal electrode material, in which meso/macro channels are formed by graphene walls and rich micropores are incorporated in the surface layer of the graphene walls. The unique 3D graphene material can achieve a high gravimetric capacitance of 200 F/g with aqueous electrolyte, 3 times larger than that of commercially used activated carbon (70.8 F/g). Furthermore, it can reach an ultrahigh areal capacitance of 1.28 F/cm 2 and excellent rate capability (83.5% from 0.5 to 10 A/g) as well as high cycling stability (86.2% retention after 5000 cycles). The excellent electric double-layer performance of the 3D graphene electrode can be attributed to the fast electrolyte ion transport in the meso/macro channels and the rapid and reversible charge adsorption with negligible transport distance in the surface micropores.

77 NANOSCIENCE AND NANOTECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2018

Low-Resistant Ion-Exchange Membranes for Energy Efficient Membrane Capacitive Deionization

Membrane capacitive deionization (MCDI) has emerged as an effective and energy efficient desalination technology for treating brackish water streams used in numerous industrial processes. Most material research studies on MCDI focus on improving the porous electrodes or using flowing electrode architectures, and little emphasis is given to the rationale design of ion-exchange membranes (IEMs) for MCDI. In this work, the ionic conductivity, permselectivity, and thickness for three different IEM chemistries (polyaliphatic, poly(arylene ether), and perfluorinated) were correlated to MCDI performance attributes: energy expended per ion removed, salt removal efficiency, and Coulombic efficiency. A 5- to 10-fold reduction in area specific resistance, which accounts for thickness and ionic conductivity, with unconventional perfluorinated and poly(arylene ether) IEMs reduced the energy expended per ion removed in MCDI by a factor of 2 when compared to conventional electrodialysis IEMs. In situ electrochemical impedance spectroscopy substantiated that thinner membranes with higher ionic conductivity helped in the reduction of energy expended per ion removed (more than 50%). Lastly, the lower than 100% Coulombic efficiency is ascribed to carbon corrosion of the porous electrodes highlighting that further improvements in MCDI do not just necessitate more appropriate membranes but corrosion resilient electrodes. KEYWORDS: Desalination, Ion-exchange membranes, Membrane capacitive deionization

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2013

Observation of negative differential capacitance (NDC) in Ti Schottky diodes on SiGe islands

The Negative Differential Capacitance (NDC) effect on Ti Schottky diodes formed on n-type Silicon samples with embedded Germanium Quantum Dots (QDs) is observed and reported. The NDC-effect is detected using capacitance-voltage (CV) method at temperatures below 200 K. It is explained by the capture of electrons in Germanium QDs. Our measurements reveal that each Ge QD captures in average eight electrons.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2014

Measurement strategy for rectangular electrical capacitance tomography sensor

To investigate the influence of the measurement strategy for the rectangular electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) sensor, a Finite Element Method (FEM) is utilized to create the model for simulation. The simulation was carried out using COMSOL Multiphysics(trade mark, serif) and Matlab(trade mark, serif). The length-width ratio of the rectangular sensing area is 5. Twelve electrodes are evenly arranged surrounding the pipe. The covering ratio of the electrodes is 90%. The capacitances between different electrode pairs are calculated for a bar distribution. The air of the relative permittivity 1.0 and the material of the permittivity 3.0 are used for the calibration. The relative permittivity of the second phase is 3.0. The noise free and noise data are used for the image reconstruction using the Linear Back Projection (LBP). The measurement strategies with 1-, 2- and 4- electrode excitation are compared using the correlation coefficient. Preliminary results show that the measurement strategy with 2-electrode excitation outperforms other measurement strategies with 1- or 4-electrode excitation.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2014

A microfabricated fringing field capacitive pH sensor with an integrated readout circuit

This work presents a microfabricated fringe-field capacitive pH sensor using interdigitated electrodes and an integrated modulation-based readout circuit. The changes in capacitance of the sensor result from the permittivity changes due to pH variations and are converted to frequency shifts using a crossed-coupled voltage controlled oscillator readout circuit. The shift in resonant frequency of the readout circuit is 30.96 MHz for a change in pH of 1.0–5.0. The sensor can be used for the measurement of low pH levels, such as gastric acid, and can be integrated with electronic pills. The measurement results show high repeatability, low noise, and a stable output.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2014

Effect of temperature on the current (capacitance and conductance)–voltage characteristics of Ti/n-GaAs diode

In this study, Ti/n-GaAs Schottky barrier diode has been fabricated by DC magnetron sputtering. The current–voltage, capacitance–voltage, and conductance–voltage characteristics of Ti/n–GaAs diode have been investigated in the temperature range of 80–320 K. The ideality factor and barrier height values have been calculated from the forward current–voltage characteristics. The variation of the diode parameters with the sample temperature has been attributed to the presence of the lateral inhomogeneities of the barrier height. The temperature dependent capacitance–voltage characteristics have been measured to calculate the carrier concentration, diffusion potential, barrier height, and temperature coefficient of the barrier height (α = −0.65 meV K{sup −1}). The fact that the temperature coefficient of the barrier height changes from metal to metal has been ascribed to the chemical nature of the contact metal or metal electronegativity.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2014

Contact resistance and overlapping capacitance in flexible sub-micron long oxide thin-film transistors for above 100 MHz operation

In recent years new forms of electronic devices such as electronic papers, flexible displays, epidermal sensors, and smart textiles have become reality. Thin-film transistors (TFTs) are the basic blocks of the circuits used in such devices and need to operate above 100 MHz to efficiently treat signals in RF systems and address pixels in high resolution displays. Beyond the choice of the semiconductor, i.e., silicon, graphene, organics, or amorphous oxides, the junctionless nature of TFTs and its geometry imply some limitations which become evident and important in devices with scaled channel length. Furthermore, the mechanical instability of flexible substrates limits the feature size of flexible TFTs. Contact resistance and overlapping capacitance are two parasitic effects which limit the transit frequency of transistors. They are often considered independent, while a deeper analysis of TFTs geometry imposes to handle them together; in fact, they both depend on the overlapping length (L{sub OV}) between source/drain and the gate contacts. Here, we conduct a quantitative analysis based on a large number of flexible ultra-scaled IGZO TFTs. Devices with three different values of overlap length and channel length down to 0.5 μm are fabricated to experimentally investigate the scaling behavior of the transit frequency. Contact resistance and overlapping capacitance depend in opposite ways on L{sub OV}. These findings establish routes for the optimization of the dimension of source/drain contact pads and suggest design guidelines to achieve megahertz operation in flexible IGZO TFTs and circuits.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2015

Polycrystalline VO{sub 2} film characterization by quantum capacitance measurement

Capacitance measurement is performed using a home-built bridge on quasi two-dimensional vanadium dioxide films grown on silicon-dioxide/p-doped silicon substrates. Correlated effects appearing in the quantum capacitance are obtained as a function of temperature at low frequencies. The thermodynamic density of states reveals the opening band gap in the insulating monoclinic phase.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2016

Determination of polarization fields in group III-nitride heterostructures by capacitance-voltage-measurements

The polarization fields in wurtzite group III-nitrides strongly influence the optical properties of InAlGaN-based light emitters, e.g., the electron and hole wave function overlap in quantum wells. In this paper, we propose a new approach to determine these fields by capacitance-voltage measurements (CVM). Sheet charges generated by a change of the microscopic polarization at heterointerfaces influence the charge distribution in PIN junctions and therefore the depletion width and the capacitance. We show that it is possible to determine the strength and direction of the internal fields by comparing the depletion widths of two PIN junctions, one influenced by internal polarization fields and one without as a reference. For comparison, we conducted coupled Poisson/carrier transport simulations on the CVM of the polarization-influenced sample. We also demonstrate the feasibility and limits of the method by determining the fields in GaN/InGaN and GaN/AlGaN double heterostructures on (0001) c-plane grown by metal organic vapor phase epitaxy and compare both evaluation methods. The method yields (−0.50 ± 0.07) MV/cm for In{sub 0.08}Ga{sub 0.92}N/GaN, (0.90 ± 0.13) MV/cm for Al{sub 0.18}Ga{sub 0.82}N/GaN, and (2.0 ± 0.3) MV/cm for Al{sub 0.31}Ga{sub 0.69}N/GaN heterostructures.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2016

Electrochemical capacitance voltage measurements in highly doped silicon and silicon-germanium alloys

The electrochemical capacitance voltage technique has been used on highly boron doped SiGe and Si layers. Although the boron concentration is constant over the space charge depth, the 1/C{sup 2} versus voltage curves are not linear. They indeed present a negative curvature. This can be explained by the existence of deep acceptors which ionise under a high electric field (large inverse voltage) and not at a low inverse voltage. The measured doping concentration in the electrochemical capacitance voltage increases strongly as the inverse voltage increases. Thanks to a comparison with the boron concentration measured by secondary ions mass spectrometry, we show that the relevant doping concentrations in device layers are obtained for small inverse voltage in agreement with the existence of deep acceptors. At the large inverse voltage, the measured doping can be more than twice larger than the boron concentration measured with a secondary ion mass spectroscopy.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2018

Voltage-Induced Charge Redistribution in Cu(In,Ga)Se 2 Devices Studied With High-Speed Capacitance–Voltage Profiling

Devices made from Cu(In, Ga)Se 2 (CIGS) solar cell material have been evaluated with high-speed capacitance-voltage profiling after stepwise voltage changes. The changes primarily affect near-interface charge at deep acceptors within the CIGS absorber layer and generate temperature-dependent capacitance changes observed in deep-level transient spectroscopy measurements. SCAPS device modeling indicates that the deep acceptor concentration is up to the two orders of magnitude higher than the shallow doping level. High deep acceptor concentrations are found in all materials studied here. In conclusion, the large deep defect levels are high enough to limit minority carrier lifetime and cell efficiency.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2018

Inverse Normalization Method for Cross-Sectional Imaging and Velocimetry of Two-Phase Flows Based on Electrical Capacitance Tomography

Proper normalization of the measured capacitance data is a prerequisite in electrical capacitance tomography (ECT). Conventional methods, such as parallel and series normalization, assume a higher permittivity perturbation in a homogeneous (lower) permittivity background. Although this is applicable to a number of cases, some two-phase flows are better modeled instead as a lower permittivity perturbation in a homogeneous (higher) permittivity background. A different normalization method is proposed for such cases, which provides similar image quality as conventional, but is particularly beneficial for velocimetry applications based on sensitivity gradient of ECT sensor. Furthermore, simulation and experimental results are provided to illustrate the advantages for the proposed normalization technique.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2014

Highly transparent low capacitance plasma enhanced atomic layer deposition Al{sub 2}O{sub 3}-HfO{sub 2} tunnel junction engineering

The development of metallic single electron transistor (SET) depends on the downscaling and the electrical properties of its tunnel junctions. These tunnel junctions should insure high tunnel current levels, low thermionic current, and low capacitance. The authors use atomic layer deposition to fabricate Al{sub 2}O{sub 3} and HfO{sub 2} thin layers. Tunnel barrier engineering allows the achievement of low capacitance Al{sub 2}O{sub 3} and HfO{sub 2} tunnel junctions using optimized annealing and plasma exposure conditions. Different stacks were designed and fabricated to increase the transparency of the tunnel junction while minimizing thermionic current. This tunnel junction is meant to be integrated in SET to enhance its electrical properties (e.g., operating temperature, I{sub ON}/I{sub OFF} ratio)

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2013

Quantum self-consistent calculation of the differential capacitance of a semiconductor film

A fast scheme for calculating the surface differential capacitance of a semiconductor film with an ohmic contact on the rear side is proposed within the self-consistent solution of the Schroedinger and Poisson equations. The method is considered using germanium as an example. Comparison with the results of the phenomenological calculation revealed the specifics of size-quantization effects on the capacitance-voltage characteristic of the film.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗