Minority Institution ARO Fuel Cell/Battery Manufacturing Research Hub

摘要

The Minority Institution ARO Fuel Cell/Battery/Manufacturing Hub at IIT ('Hub') focused during its six-year activity on three tasks. Task 1 concerned fuel cell and fuel cell manufacturing research, specifically concentrated on the direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC); (2) high-energy rechargeable battery research concentrated on Li-ion batteries; (3) minority outreach to give undergraduate minority students hands-on experience in electrochemical energy conversion technology and attract them to graduate studies. IIT acted as the lead institution for a consortium including five major research universities, a national lab, and two small companies, as well as three minority institution universities. The research function produced five patent or patent applications and more than 25 articles in refereed journals. These papers report results in DMFC performance, fuel cell and electro-organic electrocatalysis, combinatorial methods for catalyst discovery, molecular modeling of electrocatalytic mechanisms, synthesis of novel lithium-battery materials, and thermal characterization of Li-ion batteries. A specially structured minority outreach program gave 40 students hands-on experience, of which nine continued to graduate studies.