Rapid Atmospheric-Pressure-Plasma-Jet Processed Porous Materials for Energy Harvesting and Storage Devices

Abstract

Atmospheric pressure plasma jet (APPJ) technology is a versatile technology that has been applied in many energy harvesting and storage devices. This feature article provides an overview of the advances in APPJ technology and its application to solar cells and batteries. The ultrafast APPJ sintering of nanoporous oxides and 3D reduced graphene oxide nanosheets with accompanying optical emission spectroscopy analyses are described in detail. The applications of these nanoporous materials to photoanodes and counter electrodes of dye-sensitized solar cells are described. An ultrashort treatment (1 min) on graphite felt electrodes of flow batteries also significantly improves the energy efficiency. OPEN ACCESSCoatings 2015, 5 27

Atmospheric-Pressure Plasma Jet Processed Pt-Decorated Reduced Graphene Oxides for Counter-Electrodes of Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

“…Without APPJ sintering, the contact angle was as high as 142 • ; as the APPJ sintering time increased, the contact angle decreased. In our previous studies regarding APPJ-processed rGOs [24] and graphite felts [9], APPJ processing introduced surface groups containing C-O and C=O bonds on the surfaces of the carbon-based materials, leading to a decrease in the water contact angles [3]. This agrees with the present study.…”

“…Some typical types of APPs include dielectric barrier discharge (DBD), corona discharge, atmospheric pressure plasma jets (APPJs), and microplasmas. Various plasma excitation techniques can produce APPs with different gas temperatures and charge densities; the synergetic effects of a highly energetic plasma species and temperature can achieve versatile functions in material processing [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11].…”

“…The distance between the APPJ nozzle exit and the sample stage was 2 cm, and the gap between the quartz tube and the sample stage was 1 mm. More details have been described elsewhere [3,[6][7][8][9][10]24]. The substrate temperature was measured using a K-type thermocouple and recorded with a computer.…”

Atmospheric Dry Hydrogen Plasma Reduction of Inkjet‐Printed Flexible Graphene Oxide Electrodes

“…Reduced graphene oxide has become an important material in an umber of emerging applications, for instance in smart flexible strain sensors, [17] detectors of H 2 O 2 in urine, indicating the presence of cancerc ells, [18] as ac ounter electrode in DSSC, [19][20][21] as ah eat-spreading layeri np erovskites olar cells, [22] and as ab arrierl ayer for organic electronics, [23] among many others. rGO can be produced by variousp rocesses, but they currently require high-temperatures or are prohibitively timeconsuming.…”

Atmospheric-pressure plasma jet processed SnO2/CNT nanocomposite for supercapacitor application

“…In our previous studies, we have used dc pulse atmospheric pressure plasma jet (APPJ) to sinter nanoporous oxides [18,20,21,27,28], reduced graphene oxides and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) [29,30], and oxide/CNT nanocomposites [22]. Nanoporous SnO 2 has been sintered using APPJs [21].…”