Sensors and Batteries: Never Small Enough?
The world is becoming reliant on increasingly smaller sensors that improve daily life in many ways. A PNNL-led paper takes a closer look at these technologies and their future development for environmental and sensitive species monitoring.
New Energy Storage System Strengthens Air Force Base’s Resilience
PNNL teamed up with multiple agencies to install a battery energy storage system at a South Dakota Air Force base.
Ali Zbib, Manager, Nuclear Industry Program
WE Culture
METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR COMPRESSING IONS (NIH iEdison No. 0685901-13-0008)
The invention in general relates to methods of compressing an ion packet inside an IMS based device for achieving high IMS resolving power, while maintaining the peak resolution. When a relatively broad ion packet in gas phase, is subjected to a nonlinear potential profile with a decreasing electric drift field; the ions in the high field region move faster than the low field region resulting in peak bunching. While ions drift over a long drift section with a constant electric field of a mobility device, they separate out based on their mobilities. However, individual peaks also broaden due to diffusion. In the present method, by using non-constant electric fields (DC) the peak broadening can be overcome. Due to nonlinear potential profile, the ions in different regions move with different velocities. Therefore when applied suitably, these fields can be used to bunch together ions in a broad peak to a narrow packet. When the different mobilities are sufficiently separated, the bunching is applied locally; this processes will not negatively affect the time separation (resolution) characteristics. When applied to close mobilities or peaks not well separated, some loss in time resolution may occur. This method can be used in any general mobility device, but is particularly attractive in SLIM devices where ion transport is practically lossless, facilitates long drift lengths, provides sufficiently resolved peaks to be effectively bunched.
At PNNL, AI Is Accelerating the U.S. Bioeconomy
Predicting how organisms’ characteristics respond to not only their genes, but also their environments (a nascent field called predictive phenomics), is extraordinarily challenging. Researchers at PNNL are using AI to tackle that challenge.
Nanomaterials for Sodium-Ion Batteries
We prepared single, crystalline, Na4Mn9O18 nanowires with a polymer-pyrolysis method using polyacrylates of Na and Mn as precursor compounds. The optimized Na4Mn9O18 materials display high crystallinity and a homogeneous nanowire structure, which provides a mechanically stable structure as well as a short diffusion path for Na-ion intercalation and extraction. The Na4Mn9O18 nanowires have shown a high reversible capacity (128 mA h g-1 at 0.1C), excellent cycleability (77% capacity retention for 1000 cycles at 0.5C), and promising rate capability for Na-ion battery applications. The outstanding performance of the Na4Mn9O18 nanowires makes them a promising candidate to construct a viable and low-cost Na-ion battery system for upcoming power and energy storage systems.