Simultaneous multimaterial operando tomography of electrochemical devices.

The performance of electrochemical energy devices, such as fuel cells and batteries, is dictated by intricate physiochemical processes within. To better understand and rationally engineer these processes, we need robust operando characterization tools that detect and distinguish multiple interacting components/interfaces in high contrast. Here, we uniquely combine dual-modality tomography (simultaneous neutron and x-ray tomography) and advanced image processing (iterative reconstruction and metal artifact reduction) for high-contrast multimaterial imaging, with signal and contrast enhancements of up to 10 and 48 times, respectively, compared to conventional single-modality imaging.

Boosting Membrane Hydration for High Current Densities in Membrane Electrode Assembly CO Electrolysis.

Despite the advantages of CO electrolyzers, efficiency losses due to mass and ionic transport across the membrane electrode assembly (MEA) are critical bottlenecks for commercial-scale implementation. In this study, more efficient electrolysis of CO was achieved by increasing cation exchange membrane (CEM) hydration via the humidification of the CO reactant inlet stream. A high current density of 755 mA/cm was reached by humidifying the reactant CO in a MEA electrolyzer cell featuring a CEM.

Reconciling temperature-dependent factors affecting mass transport losses in polymer electrolyte membrane electrolyzers.

In this work, we investigated the impact of temperature on two-phase transport in low temperature (LT)-polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) electrolyzer anode flow channels via neutron imaging and observed a decrease in mass transport overpotential with increasing temperature. We observed an increase in anode oxygen gas content with increasing temperature, which was counter-intu.itive to the trends in mass transport overpotential.

Neutron imaging detector with 2 μm spatial resolution based on event reconstruction of neutron capture in gadolinium oxysulfide scintillators.

We report on efforts to improve the achievable spatial resolution in neutron imaging by centroiding the scintillation light from gadolinium oxysulfide scintillators. The current state-of-the-art neutron imaging spatial resolution is about 10 μm, and many applications of neutron imaging would benefit from at least an order of magnitude improvement in the spatial resolution. The detector scheme that we have developed magnifies the scintillation light from a gadolinium oxysulfide scintillator, calculates the center of mass of the scintillation event, resulting in an event-based imaging detector with spatial resolution of about 2 μm.