دانلود کتاب لایه های فوق نازک اکسید برای سیستم های خورشیدی و الکتروکاتالیستی

If there is a single most important factor that enabled the development of ultrathin oxide layers for advancing photo-, electro-, and thermal catalytic systems for energy, it is the birth of and explosive growth in the field of nanoscience starting in the 1990s. This opened up the capability of synthesizing and manipulating inorganic matter on a length scale of nanometers, which is the scale on which charge transfer, ion transport, and chemical transformations need to be controlled for designing and optimizing catalytic systems for energy conversion applications. The concurrent emergence of an array of new characterization tools, from advanced electron and tunneling microscopies to X-ray spectroscopy and super-resolution optical microscopy, has allowed researchers to characterize nanosized structures at atomic resolution and accelerate the understanding of the fundamental physics and chemistry that underlie nanoscience and nanotechnologies. Breakthroughs over the past two decades in solar cells, batteries, catalysis for the manufacture of chemicals, and sensors, to name just a few, have led to dramatic performance improvements and the implementation of new technological concepts that could not have been contemplated before the advent of the nanoscience revolution. The special interest in nanoscale componentsmade ofmetal oxidematerials for technological applications should not come as a surprise given the role and impact of thin metal oxide layers that have been part of civilization’s infrastructure and technological advances for millennia. For example, metals such as iron and copper that are ubiquitous in bridges, vehicles, ships, tools, electronics and more are in many cases irreplaceable in their role(s), yet their robustness and durability under use in harsh environmental conditions are often reliant on the presence of thin metal oxide layers that protect the metal from corrosion. A house roof made of copper is a prime example of the enormous practical importance of metal oxide layers in everyday life. Famously, the copper sheets of the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor are only 2.5mmthick, yet since 1886 have only lost 0.1 mm thickness thanks to protection by copper patina, as illustrated in Figure 1.1a,b.1 Many metals would not be technologically viable under working conditions were it not for the spontaneous formation of oxide protection layers driven by the high stability of the metal–oxygen chemical bond. In modern societies, nanosized metal oxides find their main importance in the manufacture of everyday chemicals where heterogeneous processes play a dominant role, whether as robust catalysts or as supports. Zeolites, which are microporous aluminosilicates featuring oxide nanowalls, play a huge role as acid catalysts in the preparation of transportation fuel from petroleum resources, or as supports for nanoparticle or organometallic catalysts for the manufacture of specialty chemicals. The role of metal oxide nanolayers in renewable energy technologies is currently nowheremore prominent than in advanced solar cells, and the multitude of physical properties of metal oxides and their diverse chemistry are what drives their expanding use in emerging technologies. Beyond imparting chemical stability, many classes ofmetal oxide materials possess tunable electronic and/or optical properties that can be manipulated by varying the identity of the metal(s), the metal-to-oxygen stoichiometry, structural phases and morphologies, and dopant species. As a prime example, the electronic conductivity of a number of metal oxides can be varied from metal-like to insulator-like through the selection and control of the concentrations of various dopant elements. Similar control knobs can be used to tailor the optical properties of oxides to vary from completely transparent to completely opaque across the visible spectrum, while the ability to tune the structural characteristics of oxides, such as their microporosity, can give them built-in molecular sieving capabilities that can be leveraged to enable selective transport of molecules and ions while blocking others to control reactant and intermediate concentrations at active sites in catalytic, electrocatalytic, and photocatalytic systems.