CAREER: Processing High Surface Area, Nanostructured Ceramic Scaffolds at High Temperatures via In-Situ Carbon Templating of Hybrid Materials

该学院早期职业发展（Career）计划奖研究极高表面积纳米结构陶瓷材料的形成。陶瓷材料被广泛用作电极和高效电化学技术，包括固体氧化物燃料电池、膜反应器、气体分离器和储能系统。为了最大限度地提高这些技术的效率，需要高表面积的纳米结构支架，这些技术依赖于陶瓷支架表面发生的化学反应。该奖项支持基础研究，以了解混合无机-有机材料的高温加工，这种材料可以生产比传统方法表面积大80倍的陶瓷支架。这种新颖的加工方法适用于各种混合材料和陶瓷，为实现新的和改进的陶瓷支架、复合材料和电极提供了新的平台。在电化学系统中成功实施它们将改变一个广泛的市场，包括发电、增值化学品生产、气体分离和可再生能源存储；都是直接造福社会的。该奖项的教育部分支持衡量整合研究和教学对STEM学生内在动机的积极影响。一个针对北卡罗来纳州表现最差的小学的科学奥林匹克推广项目也得到了支持，这将使处于危险中的少数民族学生在很小的时候就对科学和工程感到兴奋，可能会增加他们对STEM的参与。本研究的目的是验证一种假设，即杂化材料原位碳模板制备的陶瓷支架表面积受到金属碳化物杂质形成程度的限制，而这一基本限制可以通过控制加工气体环境来克服。研究方法是：(1)通过改性无机-有机杂化材料系统地改变原位生成的碳总量；(2)量化在不同温度和气体组成下热加工后存在的碳模板和金属碳化物杂质的数量；(3)将碳模板和金属碳化物杂质浓度与最终陶瓷支架表面积关联起来。了解碳模板和金属碳化物杂质对支架表面积的演变和影响，这种方法的基本局限性，以及克服这些局限性的途径，将为该领域提供加工高表面积纳米结构陶瓷支架的关键能力。通过这项工作实现的表面面积和纳米形态将为研究界提供超越当前设计空间的广泛应用。

This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program award investigates the formation of extremely high surface area nanostructured ceramic materials. Ceramic materials are widely used as electrodes and in highly efficient electrochemical technologies including solid oxide fuel cells, membrane reactors, gas separators, and energy storage systems. High surface area, nanostructured scaffolds are needed to maximize the efficiency of these technologies which rely on chemical reactions occurring on the surface of the ceramic scaffold. This award supports fundamental research to understand high temperature processing of hybrid inorganic-organic materials, which produce ceramic scaffolds with eighty times more surface area than traditional methods. This novel processing approach works for a wide range of hybrid materials and ceramics, providing a new platform for realizing new and improved ceramic scaffolds, composites, and electrodes. Successfully implementing them in electrochemical systems would transform a broad marketplace encompassing electrical power generation, production of value-added chemicals, gas separation, and renewable energy storage; all directly benefiting society. The educational component of this award supports measuring the positive impact of integrating research and teaching on student intrinsic motivation in STEM. A Science Olympiad outreach program for the lowest performing elementary school in North Carolina is also supported, which will get at-risk minority students excited about science and engineering at an early age, likely increasing their participation in STEM. The research objective is to test the hypothesis that ceramic scaffold surface area derived from in situ carbon templating of hybrid materials is limited by the degree of metal carbide impurity formation, and that this fundamental limitation can be overcome by controlling the processing gas environment. The research approach is to (1) systematically change the total amount of carbon generated in situ by modifying hybrid inorganic-organic materials, (2) quantify the amount of carbon template and metal carbide impurity present after thermal processing at different temperatures and gas compositions, and (3) correlate the carbon template and metal carbide impurity concentrations to the final ceramic scaffold surface area. Understanding the evolution and impact of the carbon template and metal carbide impurities on scaffold surface area, the fundamental limitations of this approach, and a pathway to overcome the limitations will provide the field with the critical ability to process high surface area, nanostructured ceramic scaffolds. The surface areas and nanomorphologies realized through this work will provide the research community access beyond the current design space for a wide range of applications.