Novel composite materials consisted of elemental Si and rare-earth metal silicides, Sm-Si, Gd-Si, and Dy-Si, were synthesized and were evaluated for the first time as a high-performance anode material of Li-ion battery. Thick-film electrodes of the silicide/Si composites were prepared by an arc melting method and a successive gas-deposition method. Among them, the Gd-Si/Si composite electrode exhibited reversible Li-insertion/extraction reactions and the best cycling performance: the initial Coulombic efficiency was 80% and the discharge capacity at the 1000th cycle was 840 mA h g-1. In addition to this, the composite electrode delivered a superb high-rate performance with the capacity of 2100 mA h g-1 even at the high current rate of 12.0 A g-1 (4.8C). The remarkable performances demonstrated that the gadolinium silicide is favorable to significantly enhance anode properties of Si-based composite electrodes.
Adhesion bonding of metals and polymers is attracting attention as an innovative bonding technology to realize high functionality and weight reduction of various mechanical parts and structural materials. This technology has been significantly demanded with the rapid development of multi-materials in recent years. However, it has been reported that natural oxide film and hydroxide film are formed on the metal surface, resulting in the change in adhesion, especially degradation of adhesion is sometimes accelerated by water molecules at the interface. The mechanism of adhesion degradation is still unclear. In this study, the interface between metal and resin was modeled using the molecular dynamics (MD) simulation to investigate how the moisture (water molecules) on the interfacial surface affects the adhesion. This study varied the amount of water molecules at the interface and investigated how water molecules affect the adhesive strength subjected to uni-axial tensile loading. In addition, the potential energy around the interface was calculated, and the adhesion mechanism with respected to water molecules was carefully discussed.
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