In the present study, new efficient materials for metal-air batteries will be created by deposition of manganese or other metals oxides over 3D-structured high surface area supports or graphene, employing the chemical, electrochemical and microwave synthesis methods. The kinetics of electrocatalytic reactions taking place in metal-air batteries will be investigated using the electrochemical and physicochemical methods. The surface morphology, structure and composition of the formed materials will be studied in detail using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and inductively coupled plasma plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES).
Department of Catalysis at FTMC has enough new equipment to implement the work tasks. The following equipment will be used: potentiostats/galvanostats/frequence analyzers Autolab PGSTAT with a rotating disk electrode and rotating ring disk electrode systems (Metrhom) and “Zenium workstation” with a rotating disk electrode system (ZAHNER-Elektrik GmbH & Co.KG, Germany), quartz crystal nanoscale QCM922 (Princeton Applied Research, USA), ICP-Optical Emission Spectrometer Optima 7000DV (Perkin Elmer). The FTMC is also equipped with an equipment for the characterization of materials morphology, structure and composition: D8Advance X-ray diffractometer (Bruker AXS, Germany), scanning electron microscope EVO 50 EP (Carl Zeiss SMT AG, Germany), scanning electron microscope Helios NanoLab 650 (FEI, The Netherlands), transmission electron microscope Tecnai G2 F20 X-TWIN (FEI, Netherlands), spectrometer of X-ray photoelectrons and Auger electrons ESCALAB MK II (VG Scientific, United Kingdom).