Clara Huang
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Research Mentor(s): Richard Laine, Professor
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Materials Science and Engineering, College of Engineering
Presentation Date: Thursday, April 22, 2021
Session: Session 5 (3pm-3:50pm)
Breakout Room: Room 18
Presenter: 4
Abstract
Climate change has increased the urgency to replace current energy production and storage techniques with more eco-friendly ones. Of all efforts that have been dedicated to improving the performance of the lithium-ion batteries (LIB) present in the market, Ulvestad et al. demonstrated that LIB anodes containing SiNx exhibit significantly higher capacities than commercial graphite anodes. Herein, we explore and optimize the performance of silicon oxynitride as an anode material for LIB. Carbothermal reduction of rice hull ash, an agricultural waste that is composed of carbon and SiO2 that intimately mixed in nano-scale, was used as the production methods in attempts to access high-performance anode materials in environmental- and economical-friendly processes. Factors such as temperatures, atmosphere, heating duration were adjusted to investigate their effects on Si2N2O yields in the products . Heretofore, it was found that: 1) higher reaction temperatures (1350-1600 °C) and longer treating durations (2-8 hours) lead to higher conversion of SiO2 in the starting materials; 2) the gaseous atmosphere (N2, NH3, N2+H2) is an essential factor determining the Si2N2O:Si3N4 ratio in the products. Future plans will focus on the influence of different densities of starting materials (pellet vs. mound powders). Testing and analyzing the electrochemical performance of the optimized products would be the goal for the longer-term.
Authors: Clara Huang, Zijing Zhang, Mengjie Yu
Research Method: Laboratory Research
