ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½ researchers are working to improve energy sources for zero-emission, electric vehicles that are an environmentally friendly alternative to combustion engines.
In some of their latest work, published recently in the journal Energy & Environmental Science, the researchers detailed how they stabilized platinum atoms for use in large-scale production of metal-air batteries.
Metal-air batteries are longer lasting than the often-used lithium-ion batteries found in electric cars.
Platinum must be stabilized to work as an effective catalyst to jump-start electrochemical reactions that store energy in the batteries. Platinum-based batteries are safer than the fire-prone, lithium metal designs.
βWe controlled the composition of the materials, and therefore have platinum atoms stabilized in the alloy nanosheets,β said Yang Yang, an assistant professor in ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½βsΒ NanoScience Technology CenterΒ and study co-author.
The research builds on Yangβs recent work that demonstrated ways to reduce the amount of the expensive metal platinum needed in these battery designs.
The work was supported by a National Science Foundation grant.
Coauthors included Zhao Li with ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½βs Department of Materials Science and Engineering and NanoScience Technology Center; Wenhan Niu with ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½βs NanoScience Technology Center; Zhenzhong Yang and Yingge Du with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; Nusaiba Zaman and Abdelkader Kara with ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½βs Department of Physics; Widitha Samarakoon, Maoyu Wang, Marcos Lucero, Manasi V. Vyas and Zhenxing Feng with Oregon State University; and Hui Cao, Hua Zhou and George E. Sterbinsky with Argonne National Laboratory.
Yang holds joint appointments in ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½βs NanoScience Technology Center and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. He is a member of ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½βsΒ Renewable Energy and Chemical Transformation Cluster. Before joining ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½ in 2015, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Rice University and an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany. He received his doctorate in materials science from Tsinghua University in China.
