• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.386-392
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• 2013

Polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell stacks are constructed by stacking several to hundreds of unit cells depending on their power outputs required. Fuel and oxidant are distributed to each cell of a stack through so-called manifolds during its operation. In designing a stack, if the manifold sizes are too small, the fuel and oxidant would be maldistributed among the cells. On the contrary, the volume of the stack would be too large if the manifolds are oversized. In this study, we present a three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model with a geometrically simplified flow-field to optimize the size of the manifolds of a stack. The flow-field of the stack was simplified as a straight channel filled with porous media to reduce the number of computational meshes required for CFD simulations. Using the CFD model, we determined the size of the oxidant manifold of a 30 kW-class PEM fuel cell stack that comprises 99 cells. The stack with the optimal manifold size showed a quite uniform distribution of the cell voltages across the entire cells.

• Macromolecular Research
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• v.17 no.9
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• pp.666-671
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• 2009

Water repellent elastomeric surfaces were fabricated successfully on SBS/MWNT nanocomposites films using the breath figure method and subsequent thermal treatment. The uniformly dispersed CNTs were found to play significant roles in tuning the size and ordering of the macroporous morphology at the nanocomposite surface as well as enhancing the mechanical properties of nanocomposites. In particular, the CNTs dispersed in a nanocomposite solution retarded the coarsening process of aqueous droplets during the breath figure process and decreased the pore size in the finally fabricated film. The water contact angle measurement showed that the double-scale structure comprised of self-organized macropores and surface the roughness induced by a thermal treatment produced a highly water-repellent nanocomposite surface.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.31 no.11
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• pp.3163-3172
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• 2010

In this work, a novel method to synthesis of an acrylic superabsorbent hydrogel was reported. In the two stage hydrogel synthesis, first copolymerization reaction of acrylonitrile (AN) and acrylamide (AM) monomers using ammonium persulfate (APS) as a free radical initiator was performed. In the second stage, the resulted copolymer was hydrolyzed to produce carboxamide and carboxylate groups followed by in situ crosslinking of the polyacrylonitrile chains. The results from FTIR spectroscopy and the dark red-yellow color change show that the copolymerization, alkaline hydrolysis and crosslinking reactions have been do take place. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) verifies that the synthesized hydrogels have a porous structure. The results of Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) analysis showed that the average pore diameter of the synthesized hydrogel was 13.9 nm. The synthetic parameters affecting on swelling capacity of the hydrogel, such as AM/AN weight ratio and hydrolysis time and temperature, were systematically optimized to achieve maximum swelling capacity (330 g/g). The swollen gel strength of the synthesized hydrogels was evaluated via viscoelastic measurements. The results indicated that superabsorbent polymers with high water absorbency were accompanied by low gel strength. The swelling of superabsorbent hydrogels was also measured in various solutions with pH values ranging from 1 to 13. Also, the pH reversibility and on-off switching behavior makes the hydrogel as a good candidate for controlled delivery of bioactive agents. Finally, the swelling of synthesized hydrogels with various particle sizes obey second order kinetics.

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 2012.05a
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• pp.56.2-56.2
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• 2012

Clinically-favored materials for bone regeneration are mainly based on bioceramics due to their chemical similarity to the mineral phase of bone. A successful scaffold in bone regeneration should have a 3D interconnected pore structure with the proper biodegradability, biocompatibility, bioactivity, and mechanical property. The pore architecture and mechanical properties mainly dependent on the fabrication process. Bioceramics scaffolds are fabricated by polymer sponge method, freeze drying, and melt molding process in general. However, these typical processes have some shortcomings in both the structure and interconnectivity of pores and in controlling the mechanical stability. To overcome this limitation, the rapid prototyping (RP) technique have newly proposed. Researchers have suggested RP system in fabricating bioceramics scaffolds for bone tissue regeneration using selective laser sintering, powder printing with an organic binder to form green bodies prior to sintering. Meanwhile, sintering process in high temperature leads to bad cost performance, unexpected crystallization, unstable mechanical property, and low bio-functional performance. The development of RP process without high thermal treatment is especially important to enhance biofunctional performance of scaffold. The purpose of this study is development of new process to fabricate ceramic scaffold at room temperature. The structural properties of the scaffolds were analyzed by XRD, FE-SEM and TEM studies. The biological performance of the scaffolds was also evaluated by monitoring the cellular activity.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.30-37
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• 1981

A simple micro-sampling system is described which facilitates isolation and concentration of complex organic constituents into three fractions of different volatilities. The method involves the headspace trapping of very volatile components from a complex matrix onto a porous polymer, Tenax GC, followed by the solvent elution of the matrix and the subsequent fractions of the eluate into volatile and less-volatile fractions. The headspace and the volatile fractions are then analyzed by high-resolution capillary gas chromatography. The less-volatile fraction is analyzed by high-performance liquid chromatography. Experimental details and the results obtained using tobacco leaves as a complex organic matrix are presented.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.81-85
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• 2007

Embedded capacitor technology can improve electrical perfomance and reduce assembly cost compared with traditional discrete capacitor technology. To improve the capacitance density of the $Al_2O_3$ based embedded capacitor on Cu cladded fiber reinforced plastics (FR-4), the specific surface area of the $Al_2O_3$ thin films was enlarged and their surface morphologies were controlled by anodization process parameters. From I-V characteristics, it was found that breakdown voltage and leakage current were 23 V and $1{\times}10^{-6}A/cm^2$ at 3.3 V, respectively. We have also measured C-V characteristics of $Pt/Al_2O_3/Al/Ti$ structure on CU/FR4. The capacitance density was $300nF/cm^2$ and the dielectric loss was 0.04. This nano-porous $Al_2O_3$ is a good material candidate for the embedded capacitor application for electronic products.

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.183-186
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• 2003

In a PEM fuel cell electrode, backing layer has tremendous impact on electrode performance. The backing layer provides structural support for the porous electrode, distributes the reactants to the other layers and acts as a current collector. It has major influence on the water management in a PEM fuel cell. Selection of suitable backing layer material for the fabrication of electrode is thus very important to achieve high performance. In this paper we have compared the performance of PEM fuel cell electrodes fabricated using carbon paper EC-TPI-060T, carbon cloth EC-CCI-060T, (ElectroChem Inc.USA) and Carbon cloth from Textron, USA (CPW 003 grade). Mass transport problem was observed under non-pressurized condition, at high current densities, in the caie of EC-CC1-060T carbon cloth electrode (at $50^{\circ}C$), due to its higher thickness. The performance of carbon paper electrode was higher than EC-CCI-060T carbon cloth electrode. The performance of Textron carbon cloth was comparable to EC-TPI -060T carbon paper.

• Carbon letters
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.57-61
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• 2015

Carbon aerogel is a porous carbon material possessing high porosity and high specific surface area. Nitrogen doping reduced the specific surface area and micropores, but it furnished basic sites to improve the $CO_2$ selectivity. In this work, N-doped carbon aerogels were prepared with different ratios of resorcinol/melamine by using the sol-gel method. The morphological properties were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Nitrogen content was studied by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and the specific surface area and micropore volume were analyzed by $N_2$ adsorption-desorption isotherms at 77 K. The $CO_2$ adsorption capacity was investigated by $CO_2$ adsorption-desorption isotherms at 298 K and 1 bar. Melamine containing N-doped CAs showed a high nitrogen content (5.54 wt.%). The prepared N-doped CAs exhibited a high $CO_2$ capture capacity of 118.77 mg/g (at resorcinol/melamine = 1:0.3). Therefore, we confirmed that the $CO_2$ adsorption capacity was strongly affected by the nitrogen moieties.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.43 no.12 s.295
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• pp.839-845
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• 2006

Graphite has hexagonal closed packing structure with two bonding characteristics; (1) van der waals bonding between c axis, and (2) covalent bonding in the a and b axis. The weak van der waals bonds cause self-lubricant property, and the strong covalent bonds cause excellent electric and thermal conductivity. Furthermore, graphite is chemically very inert because of the material composed of only carbon elements. Thus, graphite is very useful for mechanical sealing materials. However, Graphite have porous microstructure because starting materials of graphite produce many volatile during the manufacturing processes. This causes low density of graphite, which is unsuitable for the mechanical sealing materials. Thus, further impregnation process is generally needed to enhance the graphite density. In this work, high density graphite is prepared with the principle of densification when coke and pitch binder, prepared from thermal treatment of coal tar pitch, become dehydrogenation during graphitization or carbonization.

• Proceedings of the Membrane Society of Korea Conference
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• 1997.04b
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• pp.13-16
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• 1997

The permeation, solution and diffusion of simple gases ($He, H_2, O_2, N_2$ and CH$_4$) and condensible vapers($CO_2, SO_2, C_2H_4$ and $C_3H_8$), and the mixed gases ($O_2/N_2$ mixtures and $CO_2/CH_4$ mixtures) through composite membrane was studied. Composit membranes were made by deposition of aromatic fluorocarbons onto polymer substrams of porous Celgard in a microwave discharge. In the both cases of simple gases and condensible vapors, as the kinetic molecular diameter of the permeant molecules increased, the permeability decreased. However, when the kinetic molecular dimemr are similar, the condensible vapors showed higher permeabilities than that of permanent gases. The vapor solubility increased with increasing critical temperature of the vapors. However, in the case of propane, despite its high critical temperature, it showed lower solubility than other vapors. The vapor diffusivity decreased with increasing kinetic diameter of the molecule. Compared to conventional polymers, the plasma polymers showed much lower values for vapor diffusivities. The pressure of the permeant did not affect the permeability. The permeability was also not affected by the composition in cases of mixed gases.