Green Energy Materials Handbook

Ming-Fa Lin, Wen-Dung Hsu

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138605916
• eBook ISBN: 9780429881169
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Chemistry
• Index: Chemistry

Green Energy Materials Handbook gives a systematic review of the development of reliable, low-cost, and high-performance green energy materials, covering mainstream computational and experimental studies as well as comprehensive literature on green energy materials, computational methods, experimental fabrication and characterization techniques, and recent progress in the field.

This work presents complete experimental measurements and computational results as well as potential applications. Among green technologies, electrochemical and energy storage technologies are considered as the most practicable, environmentally friendly, and workable to make full use of renewable energy sources. This text includes 11 chapters on the field, devoted to 4 important topical areas: computational material design, energy conversion, ion transport, and electrode materials.

This handbook is aimed at engineers, researchers, and those who work in the fields of materials science, chemistry, and physics. The systematic studies proposed in this book can greatly promote the basic and applied sciences.

1	Introduction

Jow-Lay Huang, Chi-Cheng Chiu, Shih-Yang Lin, Chin-Lung Kuo, Duy Khanh Nguyen, Ngoc Thanh Thuy Tran, Wen-Dung Hsu, Chia-Chin Chang, Jeng-Shiung Jan, Hsisheng Teng, Chia-Yun Chen, I-Ming Hung, Peter Chen, Yuh-Lang Lee, and Ming-Fa Lin

Energy, which is used in everyday living, can be saved in various forms, such as chemical batteries,¹ solar electromagnetic fields,² hydrogen,³ flowing water,⁴ blowing wind,⁵ radiative atoms,⁶ oil mines,⁶ oil gas,⁶ and coal mines.⁷ To greatly reduce the environmental impact, plenty of theoretical and experimental studies have been done for developing the various green energy materials.^8–10 For example, the up-to-date well-established potential applications cover the battery-driven cell phones¹¹ and electric vehicles,¹² the solar-cell factories,¹³ the hydrogen-based buses,¹⁴ water-generated electric power,¹⁵ and the wind turbines.¹⁶ Specifically, this book is focused on lithium-ion batteries (LIBs),¹⁷ dye-sensitized solar cells,¹⁸ and perovskite solar cells.¹⁹ Furthermore, how to design and fabricate the electronic and optical devices with excellent performance, low cost, light weight, high safety, long lifetime, operating at a controllable temperature, and suitable voltage range are the main issues.²⁰ The distinct theoretical models are proposed/developed to fully comprehend the diverse physical, chemical, and material phenomena. According to the previous studies, the molecular dynamics simulations,²¹ the first-principle calculations under the local charge density approximations,²² and the neutral network methods²³ are available in thoroughly exploring the fundamental properties and solving the critical issues. As for LIBs, detailed analyses will be conducted on the anode materials accompanied with the chemical modified electrolytes and the significant additives,²⁴ and the different functional polymer binders.²⁵ On the experimental side, the successful syntheses of the emergent materials;²⁶ the high-resolution measurements on geometric, electronic, optical, and transport properties;²⁷ and the delicate examinations on the battery performance and the photon-to-electron conversion efficiency²⁸ will be finished under a series of systematic studies. Detailed comparisons between the experimental measurements and the theoretical predictions are also made. Part of the inconsistency arising from them become new and open issues proposed in the contents.

Developing functional polymer binders for LIB cathodes and anodes has drawn much attention for improving LIB capacity, due to their low overall content yet critical role at the electrode interface. One of the widely applied commercial binders for LIBs is poly(vinylidene difluoride) (PVDF) for its good electrochemical stability and adhesive properties. Yet PVDF binder is an inert conductor of lithium ions (Li⁺), leading to high polarization resistance near the LIB electrode at a high charging/discharging rate. Hence, introducing ion-conducting polymers such as PEO and PAN into binder development is one of the common strategies to enhance the overall performance of LIBs. Gong et al.³⁸ applied PAN as binders for various anode materials, including graphite, Li₄Ti₅O₁₂, and Si/C, and showed improved adhesion, reduced charge transfer resistance, and enhanced capacity endurance. More recently, Tsao et al. utilized PEO-b-PAN copolymer as LiFePO₄ cathode binder for LIB and this showed an improved charge transfer resistance and high-capacity retention under a high C-rate. Another study by the same group developed a water-borne binder of fluorinated copolymer functionalized with PEO featuring small impedance during charging and discharging.²⁹ A novel PEDOT:PSS developed by Das et al. as LiFePO₄ cathode binders showed improved LIB capacities after a cycling test. Note that current studies have utilized various complex formulas such as polymer blends or copolymers, making it difficult to identify the molecular effects of each functional polymer. Also, the detailed mechanisms of the aforementioned novel functional polymers on affecting Li⁺ transports at the electrode interface may differ from polymer electrolyte and thus remain elusive.

Graphite, in which graphene layers are periodically arranged along the z-direction, has been extensively utilized in everyday living for a long time. Three kinds of typical stacking configurations have been successfully identified from the experimental measurements. There exist AAA, ABA, and ABC stackings, namely, the simple hexagonal, Bernal, and rhombohedral graphites. The second one dominates in natural graphite, while the third one only corresponds to the partial system. Apparently, the theoretical and experimental studies on them show a lot of unusual fundamental properties (e.g., electronic properties,³⁰ magnetic quantization,³¹ optical absorption, and reflectance spectra^32,33) and transport properties.³⁴ All pristine graphites belong to the semimetals,³⁵ mainly owing to the interlayer atomic interactions of C-2p_z orbitals. Their interlayer attractive forces mainly originate from the van der Waals interactions. They are weak but significant; therefore, many different guest atoms/ions are easily intercalated into the graphitic spacings. On the other side, alkali atoms can create active chemical environments to form the critical interactions with other atoms or molecules, since each of them possesses an s-state electron in the outmost orbital. They are suitable for serving as guest atoms intercalated into the layered graphite, leading to a very high electrical conductivity.³⁶ Up to now, the stage-n alkali graphite-intercalation compounds have been successfully synthesized except for Na guest atoms. Apparently, there are important differences between Li and other alkali atoms (M = K, Rb, Cs). For example, the stage-1 systems are, respectively, LiC₆ and MC₈ with the distinct unit cell. In particular, the stacking configuration of the neighboring graphitic layers is AAA or ABA, being sensitive to the type and concentration of alkali atoms.³⁷ As to the intercalation and deintercalation of Li⁺ ions in graphite, such actions might appear frequently in th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Editors
• Contributors
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Molecular Effects of Functional Polymer Binders on Li+ Transport on the Cathode Surface within Lithium-Ion Batteries
• Chapter 3 Essential Properties of Li/Li+ Graphite-Intercalation Compounds
• Chapter 4 Defective and Amorphous Graphene as Anode Materials for Li-Ion Batteries
• Chapter 5 Rich Essential Properties of Si-Doped Graphene
• Chapter 6 Diversified Essential Properties in Transition Metal–Adsorbed Graphene
• Chapter 7 Combining Neural Network with First-Principles Calculations for Computational Screening of Electrolyte Additives in Lithium-Ion Batteries
• Chapter 8 Metal Oxide–Reduced Graphene Oxide (MO–RGO) Nanocomposites as High-Performance Anode Materials in Lithium-Ion Batteries
• Chapter 9 In-Situ X-Ray and Neutron Analysis Techniques on Lithium/Sodium-Ion Batteries
• Chapter 10 Micro-Phase Separated Poly(VdF-co-HFP)/Ionic Liquid/Carbonate as Gel Polymer Electrolytes for Lithium-Ion Batteries
• Chapter 11 Gel and Solid-State Electrolytes for Lithium-Ion Batteries
• Chapter 12 Silicon-Nanowire-Based Hybrid Solar Cells
• Chapter 13 Characterization and Performance of Li-ZnO Nanofiber and Nanoforest Photoanodes for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells
• Chapter 14 Monolithic Dye-Sensitized Perovskite Solar Cells
• Chapter 15 High-Performance Quasi-Solid-State Polymer Electrolytes for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell Applications
• Chapter 16 Concluding Remarks
• Chapter 17 Perspective on Battery Research
• Index