Epitaxial Oxide Films and Nanoparticle Network for Lithium-Ion Battery and Oxygen Electrocatalyst Applications

The global energy crisis coupling with the consumption of fossil fuels and the associated environmental issues, has stimulated extensive interest in searching for clean, efficient and sustainable energy storage and conversion systems. In this talk we are going to introduce a novel chemical solution approach for epitaxial thin film deposition and oxide nanoparticle network synthesis. The use of water soluable polymer to bind the metal ions has several advantages. The formation of covalent complexes between the lone pairs on the nitrogen atoms of the polymer and the metal cations make it possible to prepare almost any metal polymer precursor solutions. The unique chemistry and processing design of this technique deliver stable and homogeneous solutions at a molecular level that allows epitaxial growth of high-quality thin films and oxide nanoparticle network materials. Oxygen electrocatalysis, including both oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER), dominates the performance of the devices. However, the sluggish kinetics of these two reactions limits their performance. Therefore, development of non-precious metal-based oxygen electrocatalysts is greatly demanded. Metal oxides have attracted extensive interest as alternative electrocatalysts due to their low price and good endurance under relatively high temperature, which can be doped with a wide range of cations attributed to their flexible compositions and structures, leading to easy manipulation of their electrocatalytic properties. We study the nanoscale engineering of perovskite oxides and layered oxides in energy conversion/storage devices and focus on the electrode catalyst design and fabrication for boosting ORR and OER electrocatalysis.