Date of Award

2012-01-01

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Mechanical Engineering

Advisor(s)

Yirong Lin

Abstract

With the ever-increasing need in improving the performance and operation life of future mobile devices, developing higher power density energy storage devices has been receiving more attention. Lithium ion battery (LIB) and capacitor are two of the most widely used energy storage devices and have attracted increasing interest from both industrial and academic fields. Batteries have higher power density than capacitor but significantly longer charge/discharge rates. In order to further improve the performance of these energy storage devices, one of the approaches is to use high specific surface area nano-materials. Among all the nano-materials developed so far, one-dimensional nanowires are of special interests because of their high surface-to-volume ratio and aligned pathway for electron diffusion and conduction. Therefore, in this thesis work, zinc oxide nanowires are implemented as an anode along with carbon fiber/graphene to increase the performance of LIB while lead titanate nanowires are used to improve the energy density of capacitors.

For batteries, zinc oxide nanowires are grown on carbon cloth by low temperature hydrothermal method. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) are used to analyze morphology and crystal structures of samples. The performances of LIB using zinc oxide nanowire coated carbon cloth and bare carbon cloth are compared to show the improvement induced by zinc oxide nanowires. For capacitors, lead titanate (PTO) nanowires are used with Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) to make nanocomposites of high dielectric constants. Lead titanate nanowires are synthesized by low temperature hydrothermal method. XRD and SEM are used to analyze as synthesized nanowires. Different volume fraction of PTO nanowires is used with PVDF to make dielectric for capacitor. Dielectric constant and breakdown voltage at variable frequency are determined to calculate energy density and specific energy density. The influence of temperature on energy densities of different volume fraction PTO nanocomposites is also determined in this thesis work.

Language

en

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Size

102 pages

File Format

application/pdf

Rights Holder

Md Ashiqur Rahaman Khan

Download

Share

COinS