A hindrance to the practical use of sodium-ion batteries is the lack of adequate anode materials. By utilizing the co-intercalation reaction, graphite, which is the most common anode material of lithium-ion batteries, was used for storing sodium ion. However, its performance, such as reversible capacity and coulombic efficiency, remains unsatisfactory for practical needs. Therefore, to overcome these drawbacks, a new carbon material was synthesized so that co-intercalation could occur efficiently. This carbon material has the same morphology as carbon black; that is, it has a wide pathway due to a turbostratic structure, and a short pathway due to small primary particles that allows the co-intercalation reaction to occur efficiently. Additionally, due to the numerous voids present in the inner amorphous structure, the sodium storage capacity was greatly increased. Furthermore, owing to the coarse co-intercalation reaction due to the surface pore structure, the formation of solid-electrolyte interphase was greatly suppressed and the first cycle coulombic efficiency reached 80%. This study shows that the carbon material alone can be used to design good electrode materials for sodium-ion batteries without the use of next-generation materials.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Al-Si-Mn-Mg alloy, AA365 (Silafont-36), has been recently developed for automotive parts produced by the high-pressure die-casting process. During the die-casting process, differences in section thickness cause uneven cooling, which results in different mechanical properties and cause the build-up of residual stresses and defects in the part. In the present study, we have attempted to identify the microstructural changes of α-aluminum dendritic phase and eutectic region, and the mechanical property changes in AA365 alloy at different cooling rates during solidi cation. The alloy cooled at 9000 K/min (water quenching) acquired a secondary dendrite arm spacing (SDAS) of 3.4 µm and contained over 75% of dendritic α-aluminum phase, whereas the alloy having a cooling rate of 77 K/min (air cooling) showed 12 µm SDAS and 65.5% of α-aluminum phase. The ultimate tensile stress and the elongation of AA365 cooled at 9000 K/min went up to 262.3 MPa and 4.4%, respectively, when compared with the alloy cooled at 77 K/min, which had 192.3 MPa tensile strength and an elongation of 2.9%. The water quenching increases the hardness of dendritic α-aluminum phase by about 130% compared to that of the air-cooling, and it was conrmed that the fast cooling rate could increase the solubility of the elements that can be dissolved in the α-aluminum phase. The hardness of the alloy increased with an increase in the cooling rate during solidi cation due to uniform and ne size of the silicon bearing intermetallic phases in the eutectic region, caused by fast solidi cation.

No abstract

No abstract

Conductive oxides are widely studied as cathode materials for electrochemical cells, such as solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs), because of their chemical stability and high electrical conductivity at high temperatures (800–950 °C). The cathode is a key component of SOFCs, accounting for the greatest resistance loss among the SOFC components. It is important to precisely determine the conductivity of the cathode material, but it is difficult to achieve consistency among measurements because of errors caused by differences in the measurement methods and conditions employed by various research teams. In this study, the total electrical conductivity of an SOFC cathode material was measured by the DC 4-point method by investigating the geometrical parameters of the sample and the measurement terminal and the measurement device using La0.8Sr0.2MnO3+d (LSM). The measurement variables included the spacing between the measurement terminals (1 and 2 cm), lead wire diameter (0.25 and 0.5 mm), specimen thickness (3, 4, and 5 mm), and the applied current (10, 50, and 100 mA). The larger the spacing between the measurement terminal and the thinner the specimen, the smaller the standard deviation.