• Resources Recycling
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.48-54
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• 2011

Sulphuric acid leaching was conducted to extract the metal values from spent refinery catalyst. More than 95% of Ni and V and 30% of Mo could be leached out in 1 M sulphuric acid and 1 hr of leaching time. The decrease in Mo leaching was due to typical characteristic of Mo matrix. The activation energies of the leaching reactions showed the dissolution process follows a diffusion control mechanism. In order to leach out all Mo, further the leaching experiments were conducted with sulfur free spent refinery catalyst. For sulfur free spent refinery catalyst, a two step process of leaching with 1 M sulphuric acid followed by sodium carbonate washing showed better leaching than a two step leaching process with sodium carbonate followed by sulphuric acid washing, with almost 99% leaching of Ni, Mo and V. Solvent extraction using LIX 841 were conducted for a leach liquor containing Ni, 2 g/L; V, 9 g/L, Mo, 0.6 g/L. More than 98% of Mo was extracted from the leach liquor at A:O ratio of 5:2 in a 2 stage process. Similarly V was extracted at A:O ratio of 5:3 in a 2 stage process with 82% of total V extraction.

• 한국태양에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2012.03a
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• pp.406-409
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• 2012

Recently, enormous research efforts have been focused on the development of non-precious catalysts to replace Pt for electrocatalytic oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), and to reduce the cost of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). In recent years, heteroatom (N, B, and P) doped carbon nanostructures have been received enormous importance as a non-precious electrode materials for oxygen reduction. Doping of foreign atom into carbon is able to modify electronic properties of carbon materials. In this study, nitrogen and boron doped carbon nanostructures were synthesized by using a facile and cost-effective thermal annealing route and prepared nanostructures were used as a non-precious electrocatalysts for the ORR in alkaline electrolyte. The nitrogen doped carbon nanocapsules (NCNCs) exhibited higher activity than that of a commercial Pt/C catalyst, excellent stability and resistance to methanol oxidation. The boron-doped carbon nanostructure (BC) prepared at $900^{\circ}C$ showed higher ORR activity than BCs prepared lower temperature (800, $700^{\circ}C$). The heteroatom doped carbon nanomaterials could be promising candidates as a metal-free catalysts for ORR in the PEMFCs.

• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.56 no.6
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• pp.427-436
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• 2023

In the industry, it is recognized that human activities significantly lead to a large amount of wastewater, mainly due to the increased use of water and energy. As a result, the growing field of wastewater resource technology is getting more attention. The common technology for hydrogen production, water electrolysis, requires purified water, leading to the need for desalination and reprocessing. However, producing hydrogen directly from wastewater could be a more cost-effective option compared to traditional methods. To achieve this, a series of first-principle computational simulations were conducted to assess how waste nutrient ions affect standard electrolysis catalysts. This study focused on understanding the adsorption mechanisms of byproducts related to the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in anion exchange membrane (AEM) electrolysis, using Co₃O₄ as a typical non-precious metal catalyst. At the same time, efforts were made to develop a comprehensive free energy prediction model for more accurate predictions of OER results.

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 2009.11a
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• pp.23.1-23.1
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• 2009

ZnO is of great interest for various technological applications ranging from optoelectronics to chemical sensors because of its superior emission, electronic, and chemical properties. In addition, vertically well-aligned ZnO nanorods on large areas with good optical and structural properties are of special interest for the fabrication of electronic and optical nanodevices. To date, several approaches have been proposed for the growth of one-dimensional (1D) ZnO nanostructunres. Several groups have been reported the MOCVD growth of ZnO nanorods with no metal catalysts at $400^{\circ}C$, and fabricated a well-aligned ZnO nanorod array on a PLD prepared ZnO film by using a catalyst-free method. It has been suggested that the synthesis of ZnO nanowires using a template-less/surfactant-free aqueous method. However, despite being a well-established and cost-effective method of thin film deposition, the use of magnetrons puttering to grow ZnO nanorods has not been reported yet. Additionally,magnetron sputtering has the dvantage of producing highly oriented ZnO film sat a relatively low process temperature. Currently, more effort has been concentrated on the synthesis of 1D ZnO nanostructures doped with various metal elements (Al, In, Ga, etc.) to obtain nanostructures with high quality,improved emission properties, and high conductance in functional oxide semiconductors. Among these dopants, Ga-doped ZnO has demonstrated substantial advantages over Al-doped ZnO, including greater resistant to oxidation. Since the covalent bond length of Ga-O ($1.92\;{\AA}$) is nearly equal to that of Zn-O ($1.97\;{\AA}$), high electron mobility and low electrical resistivity are also expected in the Ga-doped ZnO. In this article, we report the successful growth of Ga-doped ZnO nanorods on c-Sapphire substrate without metal catalysts by magnetrons puttering and our investigations of their structural, optical, and field emission properties.

• Journal of Electrochemical Science and Technology
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.121-130
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• 2015

The micro emulsion method has been successfully used for preparing perovskite LaCoO₃ with uniform, fine-shaped nanoparticles showing high activity as electro catalysts in oxygen reduction reactions (ORRs). They are, therefore, promising candidates for the air-cathode in metal-air rechargeable batteries. Since the activity of a catalyst is highly dependent on its specific surface area, nanoparticles of the perovskite catalyst are desirable for catalyzing both oxygen reduction and evolution reactions. Herein, LaCoO₃ powder was also prepared by sol-gel method for comparison, with a broad particle distribution and high agglomeration. The electro catalytic properties of LaCoO₃ and LaCoO₃-carbon Super P mixture layers toward the ORR were studied comparatively using the rotating disk electrode technique in 0.1 M KOH electrolyte to elucidate the effect of carbon Super P. Koutecky-Levich theory was applied to acquire the overall electron transfer number (n) during the ORR, calculated to be ~3.74 for the LaCoO₃-Super P mixture, quite close to the theoretical value (4.0), and ~2.7 for carbon-free LaCoO₃. A synergistic effect toward the ORR is observed when carbon is present in the LaCoO₃ layer. Carbon is assumed to be more than an additive, enhancing the electronic conductivity of the oxide catalyst. It is suggested that ORRs, catalyzed by the LaCoO₃-Super P mixture, are dominated by a 2+2-electron transfer pathway to form the final, hydroxyl ion product.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2010.08a
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• pp.232-232
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• 2010

Recently light emitting diodes (LEDs) have been expected as the new generation light sources because of their advantages such as small size, long lifetime and energy-saving. GaN, as a wide band gap material, is widely used as a material of LEDs and GaN nanorods are the one of the most widely investigated nanostructure which has advantages for the light extraction of LEDs and increasing the active area by making the cylindrical core-shell structure. Lately GaN nanorods are fabricated by various techniques, such as selective area growth, vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) technique. But these techniques have some disadvantages. Selective area growth technique is too complicated and expensive to grow the rods. And in the case of VLS technique, GaN nanorods are not vertically aligned well and the metal catalyst may act as the impurity. So we just tried to grow the GaN nanorods on Si substrate without catalyst to get the vertically well aligned nanorods without impurity. First we deposited the AlN buffer layer on Si substrate which shows more vertical growth mode than sapphire substrate. After the buffer growth, we flew trimethylgallium (TMGa) as the III group source and ammonia as the V group source. And during the GaN growth, we kept the ammonia flow stable and periodically changed the flow rate of TMGa to change the growth mode of the nanorods. Finally, as the optimization, we changed the various growth conditions such as the growth temperature, the working pressure, V/III ratio and the doping level. And we are still in the process to reduce the diameter of the nanorods and to extend the length of the nanorods simultaneously. In this study, we focused on the shape changing of GaN nanorods with different growth conditions. So we confirmed the shape of the nanorods by scanning electron microscope (SEM) and carried out the Photoluminescence (PL) measurement and x-ray diffraction (XRD) to examine the crystal quality difference between samples. Detailed results will be discussed.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2014.02a
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• pp.488.2-488.2
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• 2014

Carbon-based materials such as carbon nanotubes and graphene have emerged as promising building blocks in applications for nanoelectronics and energy devices due to electrical property, ease of processability, and relatively inert electrochemistry. In recent years, there has been considerable interest in core-shell nanomaterials, in which inorganic nanowires are surrounded by inorganic or organic layers. Especially, carbon encapsulated semiconductor nanowires have been actively investigated by researchers in lithium ion batteries. We report a method to synthesize silicon nanowire (SiNW) core/carbon shell structures by chemical vapor deposition (CVD), using methane (CH4) as a precursor at growth temperature of $1000{\sim}1100^{\circ}C$. Unlike carbon-based materials synthesized via conventional routes, this method is of advantage of metal-catalyst free growth. We characterized these materials with FE-SEM, FE-TEM, and Raman spectroscopy. This would allow us to use these materials for applications ranging from optoelectronics to energy devices such as solar cells and lithium ion batteries.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.250-257
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• 2016

Octahedral $Co_3O_4$/carbon nanofiber (CNF) composites are fabricated using electrospinning and hydrothermal methods. Their morphological characteristics, chemical bonding states, and electrochemical properties are used to demonstrate the improved photovoltaic properties of the samples. Octahedral $Co_3O_4$ grown on CNFs is based on metallic Co nanoparticles acting as seeds in the CNFs, which seeds are directly related to the high performance of DSSCs. The octahedral $Co_3O_4$/CNFs composites exhibit high photocurrent density ($12.73mA/m^2$), superb fill factor (62.1 %), and excellent power conversion efficiency (5.61 %) compared to those characteristics of commercial $Co_3O_4$, conventional CNFs, and metallic Co-seed/CNFs. These results can be described as stemmnig from the synergistic effect of the porous and graphitized matrix formed by catalytic graphitization using the metal cobalt catalyst on CNFs, which leads to an increase in the catalytic activity for the reduction of triiodide ions. Therefore, octahedral $Co_3O_4$/CNFs composites can be used as a counter electrode for Pt-free dye-sensitized solar cells.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.48 no.1
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• pp.10-15
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• 2010

Intensive works have been carried out to develop more efficient solid catalysts for biodiesel production from various feedstocks including refined oils and waste fats. Among many catalysts, metal oxides and ion exchange resins are the most intensively studied ones. With regard to metal oxide catalysts, major research activities have focused on the identification of the active compounds and their immobilizing methods on the supports. As metal oxide catalysts have strong thermal stability, they may be used in simultaneous transesterification and esterification of waste fats. However, ion exchange resin catalysts were mainly applied in the esterification of the free fatty acids in waste fats because of their lower thermal stability. For both solid catalysts, further works are needed to make them to be used in commercial process. Especially fast deactivation of the solid catalyst would be the most challenging problem.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.02a
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• pp.556-556
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• 2012

Transition metal-based organometallic complexes have shown great talents as a catalyst in various reactions. Designing organic molecules and coordinating them to such active centers have been a promising route to control the catalytic natures. Metallocene, which has transition metal atoms sandwiched by aromatic rings, is one of the representative systems for organometallic catalysts. Group 4-based metallocene catalysts have been most commonly used for the production of polyolefins, which have great world-wide markets in the real life. Graphenes and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) were composed of extended $sp^2$ carbon networks, showing high electron mobility as well as have extremely large steric bulkiness relative to metal centers. We were inspired by these characteristics of such carbon-based nano-materials and assumed that they could intimately interact with active centers of metallocene catalysts. We examined this hypothesis and, recently, reported that CNTs dramatically changed catalytic natures of group 4-based catalysts when they formed hybrid systems with such catalysts. In conclusion, we produced hybrid materials composed of group-4 based metallocenes, $Cp_2ZrCl_2$ and $Cp_2TiCl_2$, and carbon-based nano-materials such as RGO and MWCNT. Such hybrids were generated via simple adsorption between Cp rings of metallocenes and graphitic surfaces of graphene/CNT. The hybrids showed interesting catalytic behaviors for ethylene polymerizations. Resulting PEs had significantly increased Mw relative to those produced from free metallocene-based catalytic systems, which are not adsorbed on carbon-based nano-materials. UHMWPEs with extremely high Mw were obtained at low Tp.