Much effort has been devoted to the synthesis of novel nanostructured MnO2 materials because of their unique properties and potential applications as cathode catalyst in Microbial fuel cell. Hybrid MnO2 nanostructures were fabricated by a simple hydrothermal method in this study. Their crystal structures, morphology, and electrochemical characters were carried out by FESEM, N2-adsorption-desorp...

Aggregation in heat-treated Nafion ionomer dispersion and 117 membrane are investigated by 1H and 19F Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectra, spin-lattice relaxation time, and self-diffusion coefficient measurements. Results demonstrate that heat-treatment affects the average Nafion particle size in aqueous dispersions. Measurements on heat-treated Nafion 117 membrane show changes in the 1H i...

A new and simplified approach for making cathodes for microbial fuel cells (MFCs) was developed by using metal mesh current collectors and inexpensive polymer/carbon diffusion layers (DLs). Rather than adding a current collector to a cathode material such as carbon cloth, we constructed the cathode around the metal mesh itself, thereby avoiding the need for the carbon cloth or other supporting ...

Vertically aligned carbon nanofibers ~VACNFs! are extremely promising cathode materials for microfabricated field emission devices, due to their low threshold field to initiate electron emission, inherent stability, and ruggedness, and relative ease of fabrication at moderate growth temperatures. We report on a process for fabricating gated cathode structures that uses a single in situ grown ca...

In this study, different cathode materials were evaluated for electrochemical degradation of aqueous phase trichloroethylene (TCE). A cathode followed by an anode electrode sequence was used to support reduction of TCE at the cathode via hydrodechlorination (HDC). The performance of iron (Fe), copper (Cu), nickel (Ni), aluminum (Al) and carbon (C) foam cathodes was evaluated. We tested commerci...

Microbial fuel cell (MFC) converts the organic compounds to electricity. The higher cost of the cathode catalyst for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is one of the major limitations in the technology. Therefore, the study endeavored to introduce a novel cathode catalyst i.e. porous Co3O4 flakes for ORR in MFCs. The flakes exhibited the micropore surface area of 1.0372 m2/g. The MFC with cobalt o...

Title of Dissertation: ALD-ENABLED CATHODE-CATALYST ARCHITECTURES FOR LI-O2 BATTERIES Marshall Adam Schroeder, Doctor of Philosophy, 2015 Directed By: Professor Gary W. Rubloff Minta Martin Professor of Engineering Department of Materials Science and Engineering Institute for Systems Research The Li-O2 electrochemical redox couple is one of the prime candidates for next generation energy storag...

The work is supported by US DOE SECA Core Technology Program under Grant No. DENT-0006557. We thank SHaRE, ORNL for TEM instrumentation and sample preparation. One of the reasons that LaxSr1−xCoyFe1−yO3−δ (LSCF) based cathodes show much better performance than those based on LaxSr1-xMnO3-δ (LSM) is that LSCF has much higher ionic and electronic conductivities than LSM, significantly extending t...

Membrane degradation is a severe factor limiting the lifetime of polymer electrolyte fuel cells. Therefore, obtaining a deeper knowledge is fundamental in order to establish fuel cells as competitive product. A segmented single cell was operated under open circuit voltage with alternating relative humidity. The influence of the catalyst layer on membrane degradation was evaluated by measuring a...