Design of Surface-Nanoengineered Hybrid Membranes for High-Performance Redox Flow Batteries

由于人口增长和现代电气设备向越来越多的人口普及，对电力的需求正在稳步增长。可再生能源技术的发展将有助于满足这种日益增长的电力需求，前提是能源储存技术能够解决太阳能和风能的不稳定性。 众所周知的能量存储技术是电池，它通常通过精确定义的管道传导从固态材料中提取的电子，从而产生电力。然而，以电网所需的规模使用现有电池是不实际的。液流电池提供了能量存储的替代方案，并且由于设计灵活性和安全的大规模操作而引起了最近的关注。 为了商业化，需要提高传导离子和电子以完成电路的膜的性能。 具体地，现有的基于聚合物的离子交换膜具有差的机械稳定性和低的离子选择性，这限制了性能并降低了能量效率。该项目将新型均匀的二维纳米结构连接到现有的离子交换膜上，同时开发传输模型，从根本上理解这些材料中的离子传输。该项目将在现有的离子交换膜上存款单原子厚的氮化硼二维材料的纳米粒子。氮化硼将选择性地增加质子传导性超过钒离子的传输。纳米通道将被设计到膜的表面上以保留水，从而解耦离子传导性和选择性。混合膜的电化学性能将根据行业标准进行基准测试，包括能源效率和稳定性。结果将被用来提高通过材料的离子传输的基本理解。该项目将支持和培训一名研究生和几名本科生，高中教师的补充实践研究经验将有助于向更广泛的社区传播研究方法。

The demand for electricity is steadily increasing, driven by both population growth and greater dissemination of modern electrical devices to an increasing fraction of the population. A growth of renewable energy technologies will help to accommodate this growing demand for electricity, provided that energy storage technologies address the intermittency of solar and wind power. The proverbial energy storage technology is the battery, which generally conducts electrons extracted from a solid-state material through a precisely defined conduit which creates electricity. However, the use of existing batteries on the scale needed for the electrical power grid is not practical. Liquid flow batteries offer an alternative for energy storage, and have attracted recent attention due to design flexibility and safe large-scale operation. For commercialization, the performance of the membrane that conducts ions and electrons to complete the electrical circuit needs to be improved. Specifically, existing polymer-based ion exchange membranes have poor mechanical stability and low ion selectivity that limit performance and decrease energy efficiency. This project will interface novel uniform two-dimensional nanostructures into existing membrane, while also developing transport models to fundamentally understand the ion transport in these materials.This project will deposit nanopatterns of one-atom-thick boron nitride two-dimensional materials onto existing ion exchange membranes. The boron nitride will selectively increase proton conductivity over transport of the vanadium ion. Nanochannels will be engineered onto the surface of the membrane to retain water in order to decouple ion conductivity and selectivity. Electrochemical performance of the hybrid membranes will be benchmarked against industry-standards, for both energy efficiency and stability. Results will be used to enhance the fundamental understanding of ion transport through the materials. The project will support and train one graduate student and several undergraduate students, and complementary hands-on research experiences for high school teachers will help to disseminate the research methods to a broader community.