Matching Items (133)
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Description
This dissertation will investigate two of the most promising high-capacity anode

materials for lithium-based batteries: silicon (Si) and metal lithium (Li). It will focus on

studying the mechanical behaviors of the two materials during charge and discharge and

understanding how these mechanical behaviors may affect their electrochemical

performance.

In

This dissertation will investigate two of the most promising high-capacity anode

materials for lithium-based batteries: silicon (Si) and metal lithium (Li). It will focus on

studying the mechanical behaviors of the two materials during charge and discharge and

understanding how these mechanical behaviors may affect their electrochemical

performance.

In the first part, amorphous Si anode will be studied. Despite many existing studies

on silicon (Si) anodes for lithium ion batteries (LIBs), many essential questions still exist

on compound formation, composition, and properties. Here it is shown that some

previously accepted findings do not truthfully reflect the actual lithiation mechanisms in

realistic battery configurations. Furthermore the correlation between structure and

mechanical properties in these materials has not been properly established. Here, a rigorous

and thorough study is performed to comprehensively understand the electrochemical

reaction mechanisms of amorphous-Si (a-Si) in a realistic LIB configuration. In-depth

microstructural characterization was performed and correlations were established between

Li-Si composition, volumetric expansion, and modulus/hardness. It is found that the

lithiation process of a-Si in a real battery setup is a single-phase reaction rather than the

accepted two-phase reaction obtained from in-situ TEM experiments. The findings in this

dissertation establish a reference to quantitatively explain many key metrics for lithiated a

Si as anodes in real LIBs, and can be used to rationally design a-Si based high-performance

LIBs guided by high-fidelity modeling and simulations.

In the second part, Li metal anode will be investigated. Problems related to dendrite

growth on lithium metal anodes such as capacity loss and short circuit present major

barriers to the next-generation high-energy-density batteries. The development of

successful mitigation strategies is impeded by the incomplete understanding of the Li

dendrite growth mechanisms. Here the enabling role of plating residual stress in dendrite

initiation through novel experiments of Li electrodeposition on soft substrates is confirmed,

and the observations is explained with a stress-driven dendrite growth model. Dendrite

growth is mitigated on such soft substrates through surface-wrinkling-induced stress

relaxation in deposited Li film. It is demonstrated that this new dendrite mitigation

mechanism can be utilized synergistically with other existing approaches in the form of

three-dimensional (3D) soft scaffolds for Li plating, which achieves superior coulombic

efficiency over conventional hard copper current collectors under large current density.
ContributorsWang, Xu (Author) / Jiang, Hanqing (Thesis advisor) / Yu, Hongbin (Thesis advisor) / Chan, Candace (Committee member) / Wang, Liping (Committee member) / Qiong, Nian (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
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Description
Advancements in thermal interface materials (TIMs) allows for the creation of new and more powerful electronics as they increase the heat transfer from the component to the heat sink. Current industrial options provide decent heat transfer, but the creation of TIMs with higher thermal conductivities is needed. In addition, if

Advancements in thermal interface materials (TIMs) allows for the creation of new and more powerful electronics as they increase the heat transfer from the component to the heat sink. Current industrial options provide decent heat transfer, but the creation of TIMs with higher thermal conductivities is needed. In addition, if these TIMs are elastic in nature, their effectiveness can greatly increase as they can deal with changing interfaces without degradation of their properties. The research performed delves into this idea, creating elastic TIMs using liquid metal (LM), in this case galinstan, along with other matrix particles embedded in Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) to create an easy to use, relatively inexpensive, thermally conductive, but electrically insulative, pad with increased thermal conductivity from industrial solutions.

The pads were created using varying amounts of LM and matrix materials ranging from copper microspheres to diamond powder mixed into PDMS using a high-speed mixer. The material was then cast into molds and cured to create the pads. Once the pads were created, the difficulty came in quantifying their thermal properties. A stepped bar apparatus (SBA) following ASTM D5470 was created to measure the thermal resistance of the pads but it was determined that thermal conductivity was a more usable metric of the pads’ performance. This meant that the pad’s in-situ thickness was needed during testing, prompting the installation of a linear encoder to measure the thickness. The design and analysis of the necessary modification and proposed future design is further detailed in the following paper.
ContributorsKemme, Nicholas (Author) / Rykaczewski, Konrad (Thesis advisor) / Wang, Robert (Thesis advisor) / Wang, Liping (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
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Description
The Experimental Data Processing (EDP) software is a C++ GUI-based application to streamline the process of creating a model for structural systems based on experimental data. EDP is designed to process raw data, filter the data for noise and outliers, create a fitted model to describe that data, complete a

The Experimental Data Processing (EDP) software is a C++ GUI-based application to streamline the process of creating a model for structural systems based on experimental data. EDP is designed to process raw data, filter the data for noise and outliers, create a fitted model to describe that data, complete a probabilistic analysis to describe the variation between replicates of the experimental process, and analyze reliability of a structural system based on that model. In order to help design the EDP software to perform the full analysis, the probabilistic and regression modeling aspects of this analysis have been explored. The focus has been on creating and analyzing probabilistic models for the data, adding multivariate and nonparametric fits to raw data, and developing computational techniques that allow for these methods to be properly implemented within EDP. For creating a probabilistic model of replicate data, the normal, lognormal, gamma, Weibull, and generalized exponential distributions have been explored. Goodness-of-fit tests, including the chi-squared, Anderson-Darling, and Kolmogorov-Smirnoff tests, have been used in order to analyze the effectiveness of any of these probabilistic models in describing the variation of parameters between replicates of an experimental test. An example using Young's modulus data for a Kevlar-49 Swath stress-strain test was used in order to demonstrate how this analysis is performed within EDP. In order to implement the distributions, numerical solutions for the gamma, beta, and hypergeometric functions were implemented, along with an arbitrary precision library to store numbers that exceed the maximum size of double-precision floating point digits. To create a multivariate fit, the multilinear solution was created as the simplest solution to the multivariate regression problem. This solution was then extended to solve nonlinear problems that can be linearized into multiple separable terms. These problems were solved analytically with the closed-form solution for the multilinear regression, and then by using a QR decomposition to solve numerically while avoiding numerical instabilities associated with matrix inversion. For nonparametric regression, or smoothing, the loess method was developed as a robust technique for filtering noise while maintaining the general structure of the data points. The loess solution was created by addressing concerns associated with simpler smoothing methods, including the running mean, running line, and kernel smoothing techniques, and combining the ability of each of these methods to resolve those issues. The loess smoothing method involves weighting each point in a partition of the data set, and then adding either a line or a polynomial fit within that partition. Both linear and quadratic methods were applied to a carbon fiber compression test, showing that the quadratic model was more accurate but the linear model had a shape that was more effective for analyzing the experimental data. Finally, the EDP program itself was explored to consider its current functionalities for processing data, as described by shear tests on carbon fiber data, and the future functionalities to be developed. The probabilistic and raw data processing capabilities were demonstrated within EDP, and the multivariate and loess analysis was demonstrated using R. As the functionality and relevant considerations for these methods have been developed, the immediate goal is to finish implementing and integrating these additional features into a version of EDP that performs a full streamlined structural analysis on experimental data.
ContributorsMarkov, Elan Richard (Author) / Rajan, Subramaniam (Thesis director) / Khaled, Bilal (Committee member) / Chemical Engineering Program (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05