Direct Lithium Extraction Using Intercalation Materials.

Worldwide lithium demand has surged in recent years due to increased production of Li-ion batteries for electric vehicles and stationary storage. Li supply and production will need to increase such that the transition towards increased electrification in the energy sector does not become cost prohibitive. Many countries have taken policy steps such as listing Li as a critical mineral.

Stable Multicomponent Multiphase All Active Material Lithium-Ion Battery Anodes.

Due to their high energy density, lithium-ion batteries have been the state-of-the-art energy storage technology for many applications. Energy density can be further improved by engineering of the electrode architecture and microstructure, in addition to more common improvements via materials chemistry. All active material (AAM) electrodes consist of only the electroactive material that stores energy, and such electrodes have advantages to conventional composite processing with regards to improved mechanical stability at increased thicknesses and ion transport properties.

Thick Sintered Electrode Lithium-Ion Battery Discharge Simulations: Incorporating Lithiation-Dependent Electronic Conductivity and Lithiation Gradient Due to Charge Cycle.

In efforts to increase the energy density of lithium-ion batteries, researchers have attempted to both increase the thickness of battery electrodes and increase the relative fractions of active material. One system that has both of these attributes are sintered thick electrodes comprised of only active material. Such electrodes have high areal capacities, however, detailed understanding is needed of their transport properties, both electronic and ionic, to better quantify their limitations to cycling at higher current densities.

Thermodynamic Interactions as a Descriptor of Cross-Over in Nonaqueous Redox Flow Battery Membranes.

Grid-scale energy storage is increasingly needed as wind, solar, and other intermittent renewable energy sources become more prevalent. Redox flow batteries (RFBs) are well suited to this application because of the advantages in scalability and modularity over competing technologies. Commercial aqueous flow batteries often have low energy density, but nonaqueous RFBs can offer higher energy density.

Probing transport limitations in thick sintered battery electrodes with neutron imaging.

Lithium-ion batteries have received significant research interest due to their advantages in energy and power density, which are important to enabling many devices. One route to further increase energy density is to fabricate thicker electrodes in the battery cell; however, careful consideration must be taken when designing electrodes as to how increasing the thickness impacts the multiscale and multiphase molecular transport processes, which can limit the overall battery operating power. Design of these electrodes necessitates probing the molecular processes when the battery cell undergoes electrochemical charge/discharge.

Chemoresponsive assemblies of microparticles at liquid crystalline interfaces.

Assemblies formed by solid particles at interfaces have been widely studied because they serve as models of molecular phenomena, including molecular self-assembly. Solid particles adsorbed at interfaces also provide a means of stabilizing liquid-liquid emulsions and synthesizing materials with tunable mechanical, optical, or electronic properties. Whereas many past studies have investigated colloids at interfaces of isotropic liquids, recently, new types of intercolloidal interactions have been unmasked at interfaces of liquid crystals (LCs): The long-range ordering of the LCs, as well as defects within the LCs, mediates intercolloidal interactions with symmetries that differ from those observed with isotropic liquids.

Characterization of the reversible interaction of pairs of nanoparticles dispersed in nematic liquid crystals.

Observations of reversible interactions between pairs of chemically functionalized nanoparticles dispersed in nematic liquid crystals (LCs) are reported. In contrast to the irreversible association of microparticles in nematic LCs, by using gold nanoparticles and darkfield microscopy, particle tracking reveals the pairwise interactions of the nanoparticles in nematic LCs to be long-ranged and reversible. The measured range and strength of the pairwise interaction of the nanoparticles in the LCs was found to differ substantially from past theoretical predictions of nanoparticle interactions in LCs.

Single nanoparticle tracking reveals influence of chemical functionality of nanoparticles on local ordering of liquid crystals and nanoparticle diffusion coefficients.

This letter reports that darkfield microscopy can be used to track the trajectories of chemically functionalized gold nanoparticles in nematic liquid crystals (LCs), thus leading to measurements of the diffusion coefficients of the nanoparticles in the LCs. These measurements reveal that the diffusion coefficients of the nanoparticles dispersed in the LC are strongly dependent on the surface chemistry of the nanoparticles. Because the changes in surface chemistry are measured to have negligible influence on the diffusion coefficients of the same nanoparticles dispersed in isotropic solvents, we conclude that surface chemistry-induced changes in the local order of LCs underlie the behavior of the diffusion coefficients of the nanoparticles in the LC.

Ordering of solid microparticles at liquid crystal-water interfaces.

We report a study of the organization of solid microparticles at oil-water interfaces, where the oil is a thermotropic liquid crystal (LC). The study was motivated by the proposition that microparticle organization and LC ordering would be coupled at these interfaces. Surfactant-functionalized polystyrene microparticles were spread at air-water interfaces at prescribed densities and then raised into contact with supported films of nematic 4-pentyl-4'-cyanobiphenyl (5CB).

Using localized surface plasmon resonances to probe the nanoscopic origins of adsorbate-driven ordering transitions of liquid crystals in contact with chemically functionalized gold nanodots.

We report that localized surface plasmon resonances (LSPRs) of gold nanodots immersed under liquid crystals (LCs) can be used to characterize adsorbate-induced ordering transitions of the LCs on the surfaces of the nanodots. The nanoscopic changes in ordering of the LCs, as measured by LSPR, were shown to give rise to macroscopic ordering transitions of the LCs that were observed by polarized light microscopy. The results reported herein suggest that (i) LCs may be useful for enhancing the sensitivity of LSPR-based detection of binding events and (ii) that LSPR measurements of gold nanodots provide a means to characterize the nanoscopic origins of macroscopic, adsorbate-induced LC ordering transitions.

Nanoparticles in nematic liquid crystals: interactions with nanochannels.

A mesoscale theory for the tensor order parameter Q is used to investigate the structures that arise when spherical nanoparticles are suspended in confined nematic liquid crystals (NLCs). The NLC is "sandwiched" between a wall and a small channel. The potential of mean force is determined between particles and the bottom of the channels or between several particles.