• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.62 no.1
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• pp.1-6
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• 2024

As the demand for hydrogen electric vehicles for commercial vehicles increases, the durability of PEMFCs must increase more than five times that of passenger cars, so research and development to improve durability is urgent. When the PEMFC membrane electrode assembly (MEA) undergoes chemical degradation, the MEA thickness decreases and pinholes occur. In this study, changes in the performance and durability of the MEA were measured while increasing the clamping pressure of the unit cell after open circuit voltage (OCV) holding, an accelerated chemical degradation experiment. As the clamping pressure increased, the resistance of the polymer membrane and the membrane/electrode contact resistance decreased, improving the I-V performance and reducing the hydrogen permeability. As the hydrogen permeability decreased, the OCV increased. When the pinhole area was removed and the MEA clamping pressure was increased, the hydrogen permeability decreased sharply, confirming that the local degradation has a large effect on the performance and durability of the entire cell. When the pinhole was removed and re-clamping and OCV holding was evaluated, it was confirmed that the durability improved according to the decrease in membrane resistance and hydrogen permeability.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.303-308
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• 2024

Currently, lithium secondary batteries have been used as medium- or large-sized energy sources such as electric vehicles and energy storage system (ESS) due to their high energy and eco-friendly characteristics. Currently commercialized lithium secondary batteries do not fully meet the demands for high energy density and safety. Many studies on solid electrolytes are being conducted to satisfy these requirements. In order to commercialize a solid electrolyte, it is important to supplement the low ion conductivity and high interface resistance with an electrode compared to the organic liquid electrolyte. Therefore, in this study, oligo(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene (EDOT)) is added to poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA), which is a polymer matrix with ion conductivity and sticky characteristics, to decrease the interfacial resistance with the same type of polythiophene (PTh)-based electrode. In addition, the addition of porous silicon dioxide (SiO₂) filler improves lithium salt dissociation ability and increases ionic conductivity. And the electrochemical stability of the solid electrolyte, which has been lowered due to additives, is improved by introducing a cross-linked structure using boric acid (BA).

• Polymer(Korea)
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.372-376
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• 2008

Vacuum deposited 4,4',4"-tris(N-(2-naphthyl)-N-phenylamino)-triphenylamine (2-TNATA), used as a hole injection (HIL) material in OLEDs, is placed as a thin interlayer between indium tin oxide (ITO) electrode and a hole transporting layer (HTL) in the devices. C60-doped 2-TNATA:C60 (20 wt%) film was formed via co-evaporation process and molecular ordering and topology of 2-TNATA:C60 films were investigated using XRD and AFM. The J-V, L-V and current efficiency of multi-layered devices were characterized as well. Vacuum-deposited C60 film was molecularly oriented, but neither was 2-TNATA:C60 film due to the uniform dispersion of C60 molecules in the film. By using C60-doped 2-TNATA:C60 film as a HIL, the current density and luminance of a multi-layered ITO/2-TNATA:C60/NPD/$Alq_3$/LiF/Al device were significantly increased and the current efficiency of the device was increased from 4.7 to 6.7 cd/A in the present study.

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.37-43
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• 2014

In this study, capacitive deionization (CDI) was introduced for desalination of mining water. Ion-exchange polymer coated carbon electrodes (IEE) were used in CDI to desalt mining water. The CDI performance using the IEE for desalination of mining water was carried out and then was compared with that using general carbon electrodes without ion-exchange polymer coating (GE). Moreover, to investigate the effect of the concentration of influent solutions on CDI performance, the CDI performance using the IEE for desalination of brackish water (NaCl 200 ppm) was also performed and analyzed. As a result, the higher salt removal efficiency, rate and the lower energy consumption in the CDI process using the IEE and mining water were obtained compared with those using the GE and mining water. It is mainly due to higher non-Faradaic current, low ohmic resistance of the influent, overlapping effect of electric double layers in micropore of the electrode. In addition, the CDI process using the IEE and brackish water shows much higher salt removal efficiency and lower salt removal rate than that using the IEE and mining water. This results from the lower concentration (i.e., higher ohmic resistance) and salt amount of the influent.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.40 no.8
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• pp.542-548
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• 1996

Electrodes modified with threonine, methionine and serine as ligands, which are incorporated by ion exchange into a polycationic film of electropolymerized $[Ru(v-bpy)_3]^{2+}$, have been employed in the determination of mercury in solution. The redox response of the surface-immobilized mercury/ligand complex was used as the analytical signal. When the polymeric film was electropolymerized, the supporting electrolytes were TBAP and $KPF_6$ to compare the morphology and anodic stripping of resulted polymer electrodes. At the case of the latter, the film had high porosity to give an easy incorporation of dopant anions into polymeric film matrix and a high sensitivity in determination of mercury ion. Especially, this polymer modified electrode exhibited possibility of multiple use in mercury determination over ten times. In all cases, calibration curves which were plotted by log of the surface coverage-normalized redox response vs. log[Hg] exhibited an excellent correlation (r=0.99) for mercury concentrations ranging from 1.0{\times}10^{-8}{\sim}1.0{\times}10^{-2}M$. At these curves relative standard deviation was 5∼8% and saturation response was not observed at high concentration region. Serine of the employed ligands had the best sensitivity in analytical application, which had greater stability constant in forming a complex with mercury than others as $pK_{Hg}=8.54$. The formation constants of threonine and methionine were respectively 7.04 and 7.80.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.207-213
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• 1997

A field effect transistor(FET) type dissolved carbon dioxide($pCO_{2}$) sensor with a double layer structure of hydrogel membrane and $CO_{2}$ gas permeable membrane was fabricated by utilizing a $H^{+}$ ion selective field effect transistor(pH-ISFET) with Ag/AgCl reference electrode as a base chip. Formation of hydrogel membrane with photo-crosslinkable PVA-SbQ or PVP-PVAc/photosensitizer system was not suitable with the photolithographic process. Furthermore, hydrogel membrane on pH-ISFET base chip could be fabricated by photolithographic method with the aid of N,N,N',N'-tetramethyl othylenediarnine(TED) as $O_{2}$ quencher without using polyester film as a $O_{2}$ blanket during UV irradiation process. Photosensitive urethane acrylate type oligomer was used as gas permeable membrane on top of hydrogel layer. The FET type $pCO_{2}$ sensor fabricated by photolithographic method showed good linearity (linear calibration curve) in the range of $10^{-3}{\sim}10^{0}\;mol/{\ell}$ of dissolved $CO_{2}$ in aqueous solution with high sensitivity.

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.110-116
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• 2011

Ru black was used for cathode catalyst in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell which showed low performance at the initial test. However, it was observed that the performance of Ru black cathode was dramatically enhanced after certain kind of experiment compared with initial one. It might be due to an electrochemical treatment in which a voltage was applied to the Ru cathode for constant period time. When a constant potential of 0.1 V was applied to Ru cathode for 30 min, the fuel cell performance of Ru cathode showed the best results. In order to investigate the effect of electrochemical treatment on the performance enhancement, the characteristics of electrochemically treated Ru black was compared with that of Ru black which was reduced under $H_2$ atmosphere. From XRD results, it was turned out that Ru black was not completely converted to metallic Ru by electrochemical treatment, but it is sufficient to be one of reasons for the performance enhancement. According to the results of CO stripping voltammetry, it was observed that some Ru was removed from Ru electrode by electrochemical treatment which might have a bad effect on the fuel cell performance. The removal of some Ru from as-received Ru black by electrochemical treatment is also another reason for the enhancement of fuel cell performance.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.5 no.5
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• pp.764-771
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• 1994

Electrochemical synthesis of conductive polypyrrole films was carried out in nucleophilic solvent containing p-toluenesulfonic acid or bezensulfonic acid as supporting electrolyte and dopant. Also characteristics of degradation and improvement of mechanical properties were studied. The conductivity, tensile strength and elongation of the films obtained in dimethyformamide/p-toluenesulfonic acid had the highest value of 10-40S/cm, $25N/mm^2$ and 10%, respectively. The optimum condition of electrochemical synthesis was $2mA/cm^2$ for constant current method and 0.9V for constant potential method containing 0.5M pyrrole and 0.5M p-TSA. The obtained films showed good stability in air and electrode characteristics of secondary battery by reversibility in doping and undoping. The degradation process was 1st order reaction at various temeprature. The activation energy and rate constant of degradation reaction were $1.01JK^{-1}mol^{-1}$ and $3.1{\times}10^{-7}min^{-1}$ respectively at $25^{\circ}C$. For the improvement of mechanical properties, composition of polypyrrole films with various host polymer were investigated and increase of tensile strength and elongation was confirmed.

• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.63-67
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• 2010

The organic solar cells with Glass/ITO/PEDOT:PSS/P3HT:PCBM/Al structure were fabricated using regioregular poly (3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) polymer:(6,6)- phenyl $C_{61}$-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) fullerene polymer as the bulk hetero-junction layer. The P3HT and PCBM as the electron donor and acceptor materials were spin casted on the indium tin oxide (ITO) coated glass substrates. The optimum mixing concentration ratio of photovoltaic layer was found to be P3HT:PCBM = 4:4 in wt%, indicating that the short circuit current density ($J_{SC}$), open circuit voltage ($V_{OC}$), fill factor (FF) and power conversion efficiency (PCE) values were about 4.7 $mA/cm^2$, 0.48 V, 43.1% and 0.97%, respectively. To investigate the effects of the post annealing treatment, as prepared organic solar cells were post annealed at the treatment time range from 5min to 20min at $150^{\circ}C$. $J_{SC}$ and $V_{OC}$ increased with increasing the post annealing time from 5min to 15min, which may be originated from the improvement of the light absorption coefficient of P3HT and improved ohmic contact between photo voltaic layer and Al electrode. The maximum $J_{SC},\;V_{OC}$, FF and PCE values of organic solar cell, which was post annealed for 15min at $150^{\circ}C$, were found to be about 7.8 $mA/cm^2$, 0.55 V, 47% and 2.0%, respectively.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.640-647
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• 2015

As the need for next-generation flexible electronics grows, novel materials and technologies that can replace conventional indium tin oxide (ITO) for transparent electrodes have been of great interest. Among them, a conducting polymer, especially poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) : poly(styrene sulfonate) (PEDOT : PSS) is one of the most promising candidates because it is mechanically flexible, inexpensive, and capable of being processed in solution. Currently, there are a lot of research efforts on enhancing its electrical conductivity to the level of ITO or metal electrodes through chemical and/or physical processing. In this review article, we present various additives and pre-/post-deposition processing methods for improving the electrical conductivity of PEDOT : PSS. Some of representative reports are also introduced, which demonstrated the use of conductivity-enhanced PEDOT : PSS as transparent electrodes in electronics and energy conversion.