• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.26-38
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• 2010

Degradation in Solid Oxide Fuel Cell performance can be ascribed to the following fundamental processes from the materials chemical point of view; that is, diffusion in solids and reaction with gaseous impurities. For SOFC materials, diffusion in solids is usually slow in operation temperatures $800\sim1000^{\circ}C$. Even at $800^{\circ}C$, however, a few processes are rapid enough to lead to some degradations; namely, Sr diffusion in doped ceria, cation diffusion in cathode materials, diffusion related with metal corrosion, and sintering of nickel anodes. For gaseous impurities, chromium containing vapors are important to know how the chemical stability of cathode materials is related with degradation of performance. For LSM as the most stable cathode among the perovskite-type cathodes, electrochemical reduction reaction of $CrO_3$(g) at the electrochemically active sites is crucial, whereas the rest of the cathodes have the $SrCrO_4$ formation at the point where cathodes meet with the gases, leading to rather complicated processes to the degradations, depending on the amount and distribution of reacted Cr component. These features can be easily generalized to other impurities in air or to the reaction of nickel anodes with gaseous impurities in anode atmosphere.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.41-45
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• 2007

Phospho-olivine $LiFePO_4$ cathode materials were prepared by hydrothermal reaction. Carbon black was added to enhance the electrical conductivity of $LiFePO_4$. The structural and morphological performance of $LiFePO_4$ and $LiFePO_4$-C powders were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM) and transmission electron microscope (TEM). $LiFePO_4$/Li and $LiFePO_4$-C/Li cells were characterized electrochemically by cyclic voltammogram (CV), charge/discharge experiments and ac impedance spectroscopy. The results showed that the discharge capacity of $LiFePO_4$/Li cell was 147 mAh/g at the first cycle and 118 mAh/g after 30 cycles, respectively. The discharge capacity of $LiFePO_4$-C/Li cell with 5 wt% carbon black was the largest among $LiFePO_4$-C/Li cells, 133 mAh/g at the first cycle and 128 mAh/g after 30 cycles, respectively. It was demonstrated that cycling performance of $LiFePO_4$-C/Li cell with 5 wt% carbon black was better than that of $LiFePO_4$/Li cell.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.626-629
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• 2018

Fuel cell is one of the promising electrochemical technologies enabling power production with various fuel sources such as hydrogen, hydrocarbon and even solid carbon. However, its long-term performance is often unstable and unpredictable. In this work, we observed that gasification-driven hydrocarbons were the culprit of unpredictability. Therefore, we controlled the presence of hydrocarbons with the help of external gas supply, i.e. argon and carbon dioxide, and suggested the optimal amount of carbon dioxide required for predictable fuel cell operations. Our optimization strategy was based upon the following observations; carbon dioxide can work as both an inert gas and a fuel precursor, depending on its amount present in the reactor. When deficient, the carbon dioxide cannot fully promote the reverse Boudouard reaction that produces carbon monoxide fuel. When overly present, the carbon dioxide works as an inert gas that causes fuel loss. In addition, the excessive carbon monoxide may result in coking on the catalyst surface, leading to the decrease in the power performance.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.142-149
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• 2013

Carbon materials are mainly used as catalyst supports for polymer exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). Catalyst supports are required specific characteristics of the carbon materials, such as large surface area and high electrical conductivity. Attempted were to improve electrical conductivity and to maintain high surface area of carbon materials using a microwave treatment. Microwave treatment, as a relatively new technique, takes short reaction time and reduce the consumption of the gases used for carbon treatment compared to a traditional heat treatment. Hybrid carbon (ACF/Graphene) as catalyst supports by microwave-irradiation method for PEMFC increase the cell performance because of increased electrical conductivity resulting in triple-phase contact and reduced the interfacial resistance. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) were employed to analyze carbon materials. The performance of microwave-treated carbon materials was evaluated by measuring current-voltage (I-V) characteristics and electrode impedance.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.65-71
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• 2014

As an important component of a fuel cell, the bipolar plate comprises a large proportion in the fuel cell's volume, weight and price. The bipolar plate is the most widely used; however, graphite bipolar plate is large in volume, brittle and therefore easily broken during assembling. In addition, due to its poor machinability, production costs a lot, unless mass production. Compared with the graphite bipolar plate, the metal bipolar plate has good machinability, high electric conductivity and strong mechanical strength; however, it corrodes easily and has a high contact resistance, so in order to prevent corrosion and reduce the contact resistance, the basic metal needs to be processed by use of electro polishing and coating. The water which is produced by electrochemical reactions in the fuel cell must be discharged smoothly. In this study, in order to prevent corrosion the processes of electro polishing and CrN coating were used. According to the presence or absence of these processes, the contact angles can be measured and different metal bipolar plates can be made, these plates can be used for comparing and analyzing the performance of the fuel cell.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2009.11a
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• pp.394-394
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• 2009

Water solubility of conjugated polymers may offer many applications. Potential applications of water-soluble conjugated polymers include the polymer light-emitting diode and new materials for nano and micro hollow-capsules, and bio- or chemo-sensors. We synthesized neutral polyfluorenes containing bromo-alkyl groups by the palladium catalyzed Suzuki coupling reaction. Bromo-alkyl side groups in neutral polyfluorenes were quaternized by tri-methyl amine solution. The electrochemical and optical properties of water-soluble conjugated polymers are discussed. This novel synthesized water-soluble conjugated polymers were used as a interfacial dipole layer between active layer and metal cathode in polymer solar cell for enhancement of open-circuit voltage (Voc), which is one of the most critical factors in determining device characteristics. We also investigated the device performance of polymer solar cell with different metal cathode such as Al, Ag, Au and Cu. In polymer solar cell, novel cationic water-soluble conjugated polymers were inserted between active layer and high-work function cathode (Al, Ag, Au and Cu).

• Membrane Journal
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.332-339
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• 2014

In this study, an anion-exchange ionomer solution was developed by employing poly(2,6-dimethyl-1,4-phenylene oxide) (PPO) as the base material for the improvement of the capacitive deionization (CDI) performances. It was found that prepared quaternized PPO (QPPO) exhibited excellent ion conductivity superior to that of a commercial anion-exchange membrane (AMX, Astom Corp., Japan) and also the electrochemical properties were shown to be comparable with each other. The CDI tests were conducted by employing the porous carbon electrode coated with the ionomer solution and the result showed the high salt removal efficiency of about 94.9%. By comparing the desalination efficiencies in conventional CDI, membrane CDI (MCDI) with a commercial anion-exchange membrane, and coated CDI (CCDI) employing the porous carbon electrode coated with QPPO, it was confirmed that CCDI shows the high salt removal performance improved by 52.1% and 18.3% compared with those of conventional CDI and MCDI, respectively.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.99-103
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• 2013

An emzymatic bioanode for a glucose/oxygen biofuel cell was prepared by the sequential coating of carbon nanotube (CNT), charge transfer complex (CTC) based on tetracyanoquinodimethane (TCNQ) and tetrathiafulvalene (TTF), glucose oxidase (GOx), and polyion complex (mixture of poly-L-lysine hydrobromide and poly (sodium 4-styrenesulfonate)) on a glassy carbon electrode. A biocathode was also prepared by the sequential coating of CNT, bilirubin oxidase (BOD), 2,2'-Azino-bis(3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) diammonium salt (ABTS), and polyion complex. The effect of CNT and CTC on the electrochemical performance was investigated. The biofuel cell exhibited a promising performance with maximum power densities of 3.6, 10.1, and $46.5{\mu}W/cm^2$ at 5, 20, and 200 mM of glucose concentration, respectively. The result indicates that the biofuel cell architecture prepared in this study can be used in the development of biofuel cells and biosensors.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.5 no.5
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• pp.204-207
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• 2004

In this work, we present the electrochemical properties of Al bipolar plate, which can be re-searched for the application of PEMFC system. Bulk resistance of the plate was measured with a four-point probe method. The electrical conductivity of noble metal coated Al plate was 4.40 x 10$^4$ S/cm. On the other hand, the electrical interfacial resistance of the noble metal coated Al plate valued at 0.15 mΩ-$\textrm{cm}^2$ and that of graphite was 0.26 mΩ-$\textrm{cm}^2$ under the holding pressure of 140 N/$\textrm{cm}^2$ at the applied current of 5 A. And the performance of Al bipolar plate for PEMFC was evaluated at various conditions. The single cell performance was more than 0.43 W/$\textrm{cm}^2$ (0.47 Wig) for noble metal coated Al bipolar plate at 5$0^{\circ}C$ under atmospheric pressure in external humidified hydrogen and oxygen condition. As the present results, we could show the results that the noble metal coated Al bipolar plates were favorable in the aspect of electrical properties compared with those of the commercialized resin-impregnated graphite plates.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.43 no.5 s.288
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• pp.270-276
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• 2006

LSGM(($La_xSr_{1-x})(Ga_yMg_{1-y})O_3$) electrolyte is known to show very serious interfacial reaction with other unit cell components, especially with an anode. Such an interfacial reaction induced the phase instability of constituent component and deterioration of the unit cell performance, which become the most challenging issues in LSGM-based SOFCs. In this study, we fabricated LSGM($La_{0.8}Sr_{0.2}Ga_{0.83}Mg_{0.17}O_x$) electrolyte supported-type cell in order to avoid such interfacial problem by lowering the heat-treatment temperature of the electrode fabrication. According to the microstructural and phase analysis, there was no serious interfacial reaction at both electrolyte/anode and electrolyte/cathode interfaces. Moreover, from the electrochemical characterization of the unit cell performance, there was no distinct deterioration of the open cell voltage as well as an internal cell resistance. These results demonstrate the most critical point to be concerned in LSGM-based SOFC is either to find a proper electrode material which will not give any interfacial reaction with LSGM electrolyte or to properly adjust the processing variables for unit cell fabrication, to reduce the interfacial reaction.