Speaker on Campus--Hector Abruna, Friday May 8th

Prof. Abruna will be speaking on campus this week, Friday May 8th at 11 am in ESB 1001. 

His talk is titled: "Electrical Energy Generation and Storage: Fuel Cells, Lithium Ion Batteries and SuperCaps"

ABSTRACT:

This presentation will deal with materials aspects related to electrical energy generation and storage as exemplified by fuel cells in the former and lithium ion batteries and super capacitors in the latter. The first part of the presentation will focus on the development of new materials for fuel cell applications with emphasis on ordered intermetallic phases as both bulk electrodes and nano-particles. The electrocatalytic activity of these materials has been assessed via electrochemical methods including cyclic and rotating disk electrode voltammetries. They have also been characterized via in-situ FT-IR, DEMS (differential electrochemical mass spectrometry), UHV surface analysis methods and in-situ X-ray diffraction. The use of high throughput combinatorial methods will also be discussed. The second part of the presentation will deal with the use of organic thiolates/disulfides for application in high performance cathodes for lithium ion rechargeable batteries and supercapacitors. The results of synthesis, computational and electrochemical characterization studies will be presented. The presentation will conclude with a projection of future directions.

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