Activated carbon fibres and composites on its base for high performance hydrogen storage system

To obtain high hydrogen sorption capacity and reduce the time of the cycle (adsorption/desorption) in the gas storage system a new composite material (metal hydride particles on the activated carbon fibre matrix) was suggested. Different adsorbent materials such as activated carbon fibre “Busofit”, granular activated carbon and new composite sorbent (metal hydride La_0.5Ni₅Ce_0.5 particles on the activated carbon fibre “Busofit”) were tested. Effect of the carbon sorbent nature and metal hydride content is important to choose the optimal sorbent bed.In this paper, a thermally regulated storage system for hydrogen was numerically analyzed and experimentally validated. A two-dimensional transient model was used to analyze the influence of the thermal control on the operating characteristics of the flat sectional vessel. The evolution of the temperature, pressure and volumetric density of hydrogen inside the vessel during the charging/discharging is discussed. It was shown that heat pipe based thermal control of the process increase the efficiency of the hydrogen storage. Such vessels are interesting to be applied in fuel cells used for vehicle or dual-fuel engine car (hydrogen/gasoline, hydrogen/methane).     

Ge quantum dot arrays grown by ultrahigh vacuum molecular-beam epitaxy on the Si(001) surface: nucleation,morphology, and CMOS compatibility

Issues of morphology, nucleation, and growth of Ge cluster arrays deposited by ultrahigh vacuum molecular beam epitaxy on the Si(001) surface are considered. Difference in nucleation of quantum dots during Ge deposition at low (≲600°C) and high (≳600°C) temperatures is studied by high resolution scanning tunneling microscopy. The atomic models of growth of both species of Ge huts--pyramids and wedges-- are proposed. The growth cycle of Ge QD arrays at low temperatures is explored. A problem of lowering of the array formation temperature is discussed with the focus on CMOS compatibility of the entire process; a special attention is paid upon approaches to reduction of treatment temperature during the Si(001) surface pre-growth cleaning, which is at once a key and the highest-temperature phase of the Ge/Si(001) quantum dot dense array formation process. The temperature of the Si clean surface preparation, the final high-temperature step of which is, as a rule, carried out directly in the MBE chamber just before the structure deposition, determines the compatibility of formation process of Ge-QD-array based devices with the CMOS manufacturing cycle. Silicon surface hydrogenation at the final stage of its wet chemical etching during the preliminary cleaning is proposed as a possible way of efficient reduction of the Si wafer pre-growth annealing temperature.     

Swelling and Shrinking Properties of Thermo-Responsive Polymeric Ionic Liquid Hydrogels with Embedded Linear pNIPAAM

In this study, varying concentrations of linear pNIPAAM have been incorporated for the first time into a thermo-responsive polymeric ionic liquid (PIL) hydrogel, namely tributyl-hexyl phosphonium 3-sulfopropylacrylate (P-SPA), to produce semi-interpenetrating polymer networks. The thermal properties of the resulting hydrogels have been investigated along with their thermo-induced shrinking and reswelling capabilities. The semi-interpenetrating networks (IPN) hydrogels were found to have improved shrinking and reswelling properties compared with their PIL counterpart. At elevated temperatures (50–80 °C), it was found that the semi-IPN with the highest concentration of hydrophobic pNIPAAM exhibited the highest shrinking percentage of ~40% compared to the conventional P-SPA, (27%). This trend was also found to occur for the reswelling measurements, with semi-IPN hydrogels producing the highest reswelling percentage of ~67%, with respect to its contracted state. This was attributed to an increase in water affinity due to the presence of hydrophilic pNIPAAM. Moreover, the presence of linear pNIPAAM in the polymer matrix leads to improved shrinking and reswelling response compared to the equivalent PIL.