physics@home

The projects goals are in Solid-State Physics, Material Science, Optics and Chemistry. The scientific research in these fields is currently in the experimental stage with a theoretical focus. Research is being conducted at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL [NM,US]), Clarkson University [NY, US], National Technical University of Ukraine “Kyiv Polytechnic Institute” (NTUU “KPI” Kiev, Ukraine) and elsewhere, due to their great relevance to the world-wide effort in the clean renewable energy arena.

This project is research in the well known physical phenomena of Sintering. Sintering is a technique of consolidating powder compacts by use of thermal energy. This technique is one of the oldest human technologies, originating in the prehistoric era with the firing of pottery. These days, sintering is widely used to fabricate bulk ceramic components and powder metallurgical parts. This is important technology, and is used for building solar-cell and other nano-electronic devices. Greater sintering homogeneity leads to higher quality. One goal of the project is to optimize sintering homogeneity for different sizes, temperature profile and other physical conditions.

The process of Diffusional Growth produces catalysts. Catalytic powder consists of nano-particles that in bulk have a large active surface. People use platinum, gold, plus other nano-particles on gas vehicles or aeroplane engines as an industrial application. In general, where there exists a chemical reaction of oxidation, these free energies will be used for daily needs. Developing core-shell systems can significantly improve activity of the catalyst, i.e. productivity of oxidation reactions. Environmental pollution, as a by-product of oxidation, is significantly less than it otherwise would be, without using a catalyst. Additionally, Nano-particles could sinter and/or decrease their surface which will cause less chemical activity. We have to investigate methods and possibly improve this technology. It will enable chemical reactions to be more productive.

The wide range of numerical experiments can optimize the geometry of a molecule, or simulate adiabatic or non adiabatic molecular reactions. Simply, this method allows us to simulate very short chemical reactions (~10^-12 seconds), where the experimental part is quite expensive to do in reality. Some of the methods are very computationally demanding for large systems, especially when precision of calculations are an important factor of the reaction.

Vasyl Kuzmenko

• Website: http://physicshome.tk/physics/
• Join to team: Ukraine

• First seen on: 2013-02-22
• Date of completion: <font color="green"><strong>Project Is Active</strong></font>