Date of Award

1-1-2010

Document Type

Campus Access Thesis

Department

Mechanical Engineering

First Advisor

Kenneth L. Reifsnider

Abstract

Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) is a powerful and proven tool for analyzing AC impedance response. A conventional three electrode EIS method was used to perform the investigation in the present study. Saturated potassium chloride solution was used as the electrolyte, and three different material rods were used as working electrodes. Different configurations of electrode area were exposed to the electrolyte as an active area to investigate electrode geometry effects. Both solid and hollow electrodes were used to explore that type of morphological dependence more precisely. Counter to working electrode distance was also altered while keeping the working electrode effective area constant to explore the AC response dependence on the variation of ion travel distance. Some controlled experiments were done to validate the experimental setup and to provide a control condition for comparison with experimental results. A set of Cyclic Voltammetry tests were conducted to investigate oxidation on electrode surfaces. A frequency range of 1 mHz to 1 MHz was used for all experiments.

The electrode material as well as electrode geometry was systematically varied in the present study. From these and other studies, we hope to develop a fundamental foundation for understanding specific changes in local geometry in fuel cell (and other) electrodes as a method of designing local morphology for specific performance.

Rights

© 2010, Md. Riaz Uddin Ahmed

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