Strain Engineering to Modify the Electrochemistry of Energy Storage Electrodes.
Strain engineering has been a critical aspect of device design in semiconductor manufacturing for the past decade, but remains relatively unexplored for other applications, such as energy storage. Using mechanical strain as an input parameter to modulate electrochemical potentials of metal oxides opens new opportunities intersecting fields of electrochemistry and mechanics. Here we demonstrate that less than 0.1% strain on a Ni-Ti-O based metal-oxide formed on superelastic shape memory NiTi alloys leads to anodic and cathodic peak potential shifts by up to ~30 mV in an electrochemical cell. Moreover, using the superelastic properties of NiTi to enable strain recovery also recovers the electrochemical potential of the metal oxide, providing mechanistic evidence of strain-modified electrochemistry. These results indicate that mechanical energy can be coupled with electrochemical systems to efficiently design and optimize a new class of strain-modulated energy storage materials.
Interdisciplinary Materials Science Program, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235 USA.|Department of Mechanical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235 USA.
Nitin
N
Muralidharan
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235 USA.
Rachel
R
Carter
Interdisciplinary Materials Science Program, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235 USA.|Department of Mechanical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235 USA.
Landon
L
Oakes
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235 USA.
Adam P
AP
Cohn
Interdisciplinary Materials Science Program, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235 USA.|Department of Mechanical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235 USA.
Cary L
CL
Pint