6/4/2013 Block Copolymer Lithography of Rhodium Nanoparticles for High Temperature Electrocatalysis

Paper:

Block Copolymer Lithography of Rhodium
Nanoparticles for High Temperature Electrocatalysis

David A Boyd, Yong Hao, Changyi Li, David G. Goodwin, and Sossina M Haile

ACS Nano, Just Accepted Manuscript • DOI: 10.1021/nn400156y • Publication Date (Web): 28 May 2013

Keywords: rhodium nanostructures, triblock terpolymer, PS-b-P2VP-b-PEO, BCP Applications, XPS, fuel cell, AC impedance spectroscopy, NP placement

Dead Body: Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFC) are expensive w.r.t. cost per watt compared to coal-fired power plants for electricity generation, even though they are the highest with fuel-to-energy conversion efficiency. Increased anode design directed to increasing gas-metal-ceramic triple-phase boundaries for more reaction sites, possibly through metal nanoparticles

Prior work: Citations on increased SOFC efficiency.  Citations on loading BCP with NPs (aka BCPL) - small particle size, low processing cost, large area, good particle spacing.

Solution: Use BCPL to space out Rh NPs for increased SOFC efficiency


What are the most interesting results: 

• That Rh was so easily incorporated into BCP without any functionalizations
• It seems that this can be done with all sorts of materials

What are the most interesting discussions: 

• The BCP infiltration was so useful because it allowed them to investigation the impact of particle size and space.  Otherwise, all the NPS would agglomerate.
• PS-P2VP and PS-P4VP were tried, but didn't give good results

Materials used: 

PS(32000)-P2VP(1300)-PEO(3000) (P4866-S2VPEO, PolymerSource, Inc) in toluene
rhodium(III) chloride hyrate (Sigma Aldrich)
sping cast and O2 RIE to remove polymer

How this applies to my work:

• can we do this with Au for richie's work? 
• What other work needs to space out NPs to measure them?
• They didn't anneal at all.  Sometimes, it is worth checking out the unannealed substrate to see what it looks like
• Would this be better in a thin-film?  
• They spun the BCP/solvent solution for a long time, and maybe our solutions require longer spinning

Applications:

Cited - Rh NPs for controlling automobile exhaust emissions, reforming biogas and diesel fuel, 

My own -