Nanoparticulate NiO and NiO/C composites with different carbon proportions have been prepared for anode application in lithium and sodium ion batteries. Structural characterization demonstrated the presence of metallic Ni in the composites. Morphological study revealed that the NiO and Ni nanoparticles were well dispersed in the matrix of amorphous carbon. The electrochemical study showed that ...

For SOFCs to be main means of power generation, they should be able to exploit wide variety of fuels. Among Ni-cermets, Ni-YSZ is the state-of-the-art materials for the anode in SOFC which is the fuel electrode. But sulphur impurity present in different gaseous fuels (e.g Biogas), depending on its concentration, is highly poisonous to the stability and electrochemical performance of the Ni cata...

Three-dimesional hierarchical electrodes exhibiting multi-dimensional geometries provide exceptional advantages for advanced energy storage performance. In this work, we report the fabrication and characterization of biotemplated hierarchical-Ni/NiO electrodes enabled by thermal oxidation of electroless Ni-coated Tobacco mosaic viruses (TMVs) self-assembled on Au-coated Si micropillar arrays. U...

The development of low-cost, high-efficiency, and stable bifunctional electrocatalysts toward the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is of paramount importance for large-scale water splitting. Here, we develop a new strategy for the first design and synthesis of a NiO@Ni decorated WS2 nanosheet array on carbon cloth (NiO@Ni/WS2/CC) composite. This composite se...

We report experimental and theoretical evidence of surface effects in the Ni 2p x-ray photoemission spectra !XPS" of NiO. The Ni 2p3/2 surface-enhanced XPS of a NiO sample show a relative enhancement of the intensity of the known satellite at 1.5 eV higher binding energy from the main line, indicating a considerable surface contribution of this satellite. The results are discussed in terms of b...

We propose a 'weaving' evolution mechanism, by systematically investigating the products obtained in controlled experiments, to demonstrate the formation of Ni-based 'microflowers' which consists of multiple characteristic dimensions, in which the three dimensional (3D) NiO 'microflower' is constructed by a two-dimensional (2D) nanosheet framework that is derived from weaving one-dimensional (1...

The conversion reactions of pure NiF2 and the NiO-doped NiF2-C composite (NiO-NiF2-C) were investigated using X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and pair distribution function (PDF) analysis. The enhanced electronic conductivity of NiO-NiF2-C is associated with a significant improvement in the reversibility of the conversion reaction compared to pure NiF2. Different evolutions of the size dist...

We report the Ni 2p x-ray photoelectron spectra of NiO thin films grown on different oxide substrates, namely, SiO2, Al2O3, and MgO. The main line of the Ni 2p spectra is attributed to the bulk component, and the shoulder at 1.5 eV higher binding energies to the surface component. The spectra of the NiO thin films show strong differences with respect to that of bulk NiO. The energy separation b...

La0.8Sr0.2CoO3 was coated on NiO (LSC–NiO) cathodes using a sol–gel method. Dissolution studies in molten Li2CO3 and K2CO3 (62:38 mol%) at 650 8C showed lower Ni dissolution than that of the conventional nickel oxide cathode. Impedance analysis showed that the behavior of the developed cathode is similar to that of nickel oxide. The LSC coated Ni cathode has an over potential of 109 mVat an app...

Variations of the electronic properties of nickel during the first stages of oxidation were studied by means of the soft x-ray appearance potential spectroscopy (APS). The spectra consist of a superposition of contributions from metallic nickel and from NiO and yield no evidence for a con­ tinuous change of the oxidation state of the Ni atoms. The binding energy of the 2p3/2-electrons in metall...