To take full advantages of the structural uniqueness and exceptional properties of graphene as reinforcement in composites, harvesting well-dispersed graphene is essential. On the other hand, it is challenging to achieve simultaneously high stiffness, strength and toughness in engineered materials because of the trade-off relations between these properties. Here we demonstrate that the graphene reinforcing potential can be significantly enhanced through the excellent dispersion of graphene sheets in the matrix material and the strong graphene-matrix bonding by the coupled hydrogen passivation and ultrasonication technique. The fabricated graphene/epoxy composites exhibit simultaneously remarkable increase in elastic modulus, fracture strength, and fracture energy. We found that the inlet hydrogen atoms in the hydrogen passivation serve as a source of the second atoms to terminate the C dangling bonds and form more stable C-H bonds, separating graphene flakes and promoting the binding with the matrix material.

Fossil fuel power plants are responsible for a significant portion of anthropogenic atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and due to concerns over global climate change, finding solutions that significantly reduce emissions at their source has become a vital concern. When oxygen (O2) is reduced along with CO2 at the cathode of an anion exchange membrane (AEM) electrochemical cell, carbonate and bicarbonate are formed which are transported through electrolyte by migration from the cathode to the anode where they are oxidized back to CO2 and O2. This behavior makes AEM-based devices scientifically interesting CO2 separation devices or “electrochemical CO2 pumps.” Electrochemical CO2 separation is a promising alternative to state-of-the-art solvent-based methods because the cells operate at low temperatures and scale with surface area, not volume, suggesting that industrial electrochemical systems could be more compact than amine sorption technologies. In this work, we investigate the impact of the CO2 separator cell potential on the CO2 flux, carbonate transport mechanism and process costs. The applied electrical current and CO2 flux showed a strong correlation that was both stable and reversible. The dominant anion transport pathway, carbonate vs. bicarbonate, undergoes a shift from carbonate to mixed carbonate/bicarbonate with increased potential. A preliminary techno-economic analysis shows that despite the limitations of present cells, there is a clear pathway to meet the US DOE 2025 and 2035 targets for power plant retrofit CO2 capture systems through materials and systems-level advances

A B S T R A C TBecause of the activity for carbon materials to rapidly form peroxide-like species in alkaline media which cause considerable membrane degradation, there is a significant need to find stable non-carbon support materials for Pt and other oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) catalysts. The objective of this study was to investigate the performance of platinum supported on tin-doped indium oxide (ITO) electrocatalysts for the ORR in alkaline media. Platinum was deposited onto ITO by galvanic displacement and the Pt/ITO was physically characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Electrochemical experiments showed that Pt/ITO catalysts outperform commercial Pt/Vulcan in terms of both activity and stability. The specific activity and mass activity of Pt/ITO were about 2.5 times that of Pt/Vulcan. After 300 potentiometric cycles in O 2 -saturated alkaline electrolyte, only 17.4% loss in the electrochemical surface area (ECSA) was observed for Pt/ITO, which compares favorably to Pt/Vulcan at 37.5%. The good durability of Pt/ITO at a relatively high specific activity provides one of the first examples of successful deployment of a non-carbon support for anion exchange membrane fuel cell catalysts.

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