SCIENTIFIC EDUCATIONAL CENTER science idea

Scientists have shown that the ability of a fluorinated polymer to accumulate a charge can be increased by almost 42 times by adding nanoparticles of vanadium and carbon — maxena to it. Due to this, the resulting composite can be used in the electronics industry, radio engineering, computer engineering, automotive and aircraft engineering as a material for charge and energy storage. The results of the study, supported by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation (RNF), are published in the journal Nanoscale. Modern capacitors — devices that accumulate charge and energy of an electric field - require the development of flexible dielectrics — materials that conduct electric current poorly. Polymers, such as polypropylene, are promising as such materials, since they are easy to obtain, flexible and do not break. They are used in the manufacture of transistors, drives and capacitors. However, polymers do not store the energy of the external field well, which makes their use limited. To make these materials accumulate charge well, you can add two—dimensional nanoparticles - maxenes to them. Then microcondensors are formed inside the material: nanoparticles act as electrodes (elements conducting current), and the polymer itself is a dielectric. As a result, when exposed to an external electric field, polarization centers (charge displacement zones) appear at the contact boundaries of the maxenes and the polymer, and the composite accumulates charge better. Maxenes consist of a transition metal, such as titanium, vanadium, or chromium, as well as a carbon or nitrogen atom. One of the most widely available nanoparticles consists of vanadium carbide, a compound of vanadium and carbon, but their effect on the electrical properties of polymers has not yet been studied. Scientists from Saratov State Technical University named after Yuri Gagarin (Saratov) and Southern Federal University (Rostov-on-Don) investigated the effect of vanadium carbide nanoparticles on the ability of polyvinylidene fluoride polymer to accumulate charge. At the first stage, chemists obtained a precursor material in which, in addition to vanadium and carbon, aluminum atoms were present. The reaction was carried out by self-propagating high-temperature synthesis from available reagents: vanadium oxide, aluminum powder and graphite. Vanadium and carbon maxenes without aluminum were obtained directly by placing the precursor material in a hot solution of hydrochloric and hydrofluoric acids. The resulting powder was crushed, cleaned of impurities and mixed with an organic solvent. Then, in the resulting mixture, the scientists dissolved polyvinylidene fluoride granules and pressed polymer discs 1 millimeter thick at a temperature of 180 ° C. Using X-ray crystallography, the authors determined the molecular structure of the resulting polymer. This method is based on the fact that, depending on their structure, substances scatter X-rays in different ways. The scientists also used an impedance meter, a device that tracks the movement of charges, to assess the polymer's ability to accumulate charge. It turned out that due to the two-dimensional vanadium carbide, the polymer assumed a crystalline structure in which its ability to accumulate energy from the external field increased by 41.7 times. The proposed method for obtaining a polymer turned out to be cheap, since it does not require expensive raw materials, and is easy to implement. The synthesized polymer can be effectively used in various fields of electronics. "The polymer composites we have obtained can become part of various electronic circuits. So, capacitors based on them will find their application in the automobile and aircraft industry. In the future, we plan to focus on materials for high—voltage cable couplings, since such connections effectively equalize high-voltage fields," says Nikolai Gorshkov, PhD, Associate Professor of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Technology of Materials at the Saratov State Technical University named after Yuri Gagarin, head of the project supported by the Russian Academy of Sciences grant. PHOTO: concentrate of suspension of maxene nanoliths in water. Source: Nikolay Gorshkov Information and photos provided by the press service of the Russian Science Foundation Information taken from the portal "Scientific Russia" (https://scientificrussia.ru /)