A novel flame-retardant lithium fluoroborate salt for LNMO-graphite-based Li-ion batteries.

A novel lithium salt (lithium di-fluoro di-nonafluoro--butoxy borate) shows high solubility (>1 M) and flame-retardant properties in an electrolyte solution with conventional carbonate solvents as well as stable cycling in a high-voltage (4.8 V) LiNiMnO-graphite based lithium-ion battery.

Unexpected Energy Applications of Ionic Liquids.

Ionic liquids and their various analogues are without doubt the scientific sensation of the last few decades, paving the way to a more sustainable society. Their versatile suite of properties, originating from an almost inconceivably large number of possible cation and anion combinations, allows tuning of the structure to serve a desired purpose. Ionic liquids hence offer a myriad of useful applications from solvents to catalysts, through to lubricants, gas absorbers, and azeotrope breakers.

High-Performance Magnesium Electrochemical Cycling with Hybrid Mg-Li Electrolytes.

Kinetics and coulombic efficiency of the electrochemical magnesium plating and stripping processes are to a significant extent defined by the composition of the electrolyte solution, optimization of which presents a pathway for improved performance. Adopting this strategy, we undertook a systematic investigation of the Mg process in different combinations of the Mg-Li-borohydride-bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide (TFSI) electrolytes in 1,2-dimethoxyethane (DME) solvent. Results indicate that the presence of BH is essential for high coulombic efficiency, which coordination to Mg was confirmed by Raman and NMR spectroscopic analysis.

Exploring the homopolar dehydrocoupling of ammonia borane by solid-state multinuclear NMR spectroscopy.

Solid-state 1H-14NOT HMQC, 11B MQMAS and 1H-11B HETCOR NMR experiments are used to explore the role of homopolar B-B interaction in the thermal dehydrogenation of pure and supported ammonia borane, which is considered as one of the most promising hydrogen storage materials. This work also addresses the subtlety of the homopolar interactions in amine borane compounds, and how they differ from their heteropolar counterparts.

Supported ammonia borane decomposition through enhanced homopolar B-B coupling.

The thermolytic decomposition of ammonia borane (AB) is known to proceed through the polymeric coupling reaction between -BH3 and -NH3 sites of multiple ammonia borane molecules, which results in the release of hydrogen and other by-products, e.g., ammonia, diborane and borazine.

Rapid fabrication of a poly(dimethylsiloxane) microfluidic capillary gel electrophoresis system utilizing high precision machining.

In this work, we demonstrate a rapid protocol to address one of the major barriers that exists in the fabrication of chip devices, creating the micron-sized structures in the substrate material. This approach makes it possible to design, produce, and fabricate a microfluidic system with channel features >10 microm in poly(dimethylsiloxane)(PDMS) in under 8 hours utilizing instrumentation common to most machine shops. The procedure involves the creation of a master template with negative features, using high precision machining.