Securing this nation’s energy future will require the development of new materials for energy storage applications as well as for energy conversion. Here, nanostructured – specifically nanoporous – solids have the potential to lead to many technological breakthroughs. Their high surface area, electrical conductivity, environmental compatibility and chemical inertness make them very promising materials for use as electrode materials in supercapacitors and rechargeable batteries. At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory research on nanoporous materials is driven by their use in targets for high energy physics experiments. Ironically, understanding how the pore structure and materials strength evolve as the surface environment is manipulated is a common theme in designing new porous materials for both these two diverse applications. The ability to measure changes in morphology and chemistry of the nanoporous materials in-situ and in- operando with x-ray spectroscopies has provided the needed feedback to develop nanoporous materials with optimized microstructures for these applications. In many cases unique properties are observed in nanoporous materials as the surface environment and density are manipulated. The two thrusts of this talk will cover (1) recent in-operando x-ray absorption spectroscopy experiments that demonstrate that nanostructured carbon electrodes undergo profound bias- and time-dependent evolution of the electronic structure under applied bias. Complementary ab-initio modeling suggest that both surface distortion and specific adsorption are responsible for these changes in the electronic structure (2) the development of carbon aerogels able to wick cryogenic hydrogen needed for laser fusion targets and development of super strong nanoporous carbons able to with stand volume changes associated charge-discharge. This work was performed under the auspices of the US DOE by LLNL under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344

Designer nanoporous materials for energy storage and energy conversion applications

249th National Meeting (2015)

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