Summer 2011 Intern Project- Mark Bigham
REDUCING THE PRODUCTION COST OF 6-10nm BARIUM TITANATE FOR USE IN BATTERY SAFETY DEVICES
Mark Bigham
Mechanical Engineering
UC Santa Barbara
Mentor: Teyeb Ould Ely
Faculty Advisor: Dan Morse
Department: Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology
Creating a cost
effective method of producing Barium Titanate is a keystone technology to
producing safer electric batteries.
Current lithium-ion batteries are prone to explosive failure in a
condition known as thermal run-away.
This is caused when the heat of the electricity generating reaction
causes the reaction rate to increase uncontrollably, and the resulting heat
destroys the battery. Barium Titanate
could be integrated into the battery design to prevent thermal run-away. This is because the electrical resistance of
Barium Titanate can greatly increase with temperature, and thus act as a break
in the thermal run-away cycle. However, first we must develop a cost effective
method of producing Barium Titanate with the desired properties. In order to do this we are trying to locally
produce the Barium precursor material.
Two main methods are being used to attempt to make the precursor, one
using metallic alkoxides, and the other using Titanium alkoxide and a Barium
salt. So far we have been able to create
pure Barium Titanate from the alkoxides. Going forward we plan to focus on
finding cheaper sources of the Barium alkoxide.
