Fluidized Bed Chemical Vapor Deposition on Hard Carbon Powders to Produce Composite Energy Materials

Marianna Casavola; Lindsay-Marie Armstrong; Zening Zhu; Daniela Ledwoch; Matthew McConnell; Paul Frampton; Peter Curran; Gillian Reid; Andrew L Hector

doi:10.1021/acsomega.4c00297

Fluidized Bed Chemical Vapor Deposition on Hard Carbon Powders to Produce Composite Energy Materials

ACS Omega. 2024 Mar 7;9(11):13447-13457. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.4c00297. eCollection 2024 Mar 19.

Authors

Marianna Casavola¹, Lindsay-Marie Armstrong², Zening Zhu¹, Daniela Ledwoch³, Matthew McConnell⁴, Paul Frampton¹, Peter Curran³, Gillian Reid¹, Andrew L Hector¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Chemistry, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, United Kingdom.
² School of Engineering, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, United Kingdom.
³ Deregallera Ltd, Unit 2, De Clare Court, Pontygwindy Industrial Estate, Caerphilly CF83 3HU, U.K.
⁴ School of Mechanical and Design Engineering, University of Portsmouth, Anglesea Building, Portsmouth PO1 3DJ, U.K.

Abstract

Herein, we report a general route for the uniform coating of hard carbon (HC) powders via fluidized bed chemical vapor deposition. Carbon-based fine powders are excellent substrate materials for many catalytic and electrochemical applications but intrinsically difficult to fluidize and prone to elutriation. The reactor was designed to achieve as much retention of powders as possible, supported by a computational fluid dynamics study to assess the hydrodynamic behavior for varying gaseous flow rates. Solutions of the tin seleno- and thio-ether complexes [SnCl₄{ⁿBuSe(CH₂)₃SeⁿBu}] and [SnCl₄{ⁿBuS(CH₂)₃SⁿBu}] were used as single source precursors and injected at high temperature into a fluidized bed of HC powders under nitrogen flow. The method allowed for the synthesis of HC-SnS_x-SnSe₂ composites at the gram scale with potential applications in electrocatalysis and sodium-ion battery anodes.