Student Chapters

Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Worcester MA

Faculty Advisor: Prof. Ryszard J. Pryputniewicz

President: Wei Han

Vice President: Ryan T. Marinis

Secretary: Adam R. Klempner

Treasurer: Thomas Kokosinski

Ryan T. Marinis – IMAPS New England Education Chair, 2006

508-831-5125

BSME – Ohio University ‘02

I am currently employed in the CHSLT lab of WPI, working on interferometric measurement of MEMS devices.  I am working on my Doctorate in Mechanical Engineering.

My major goal with IMAPS-NE is to promote student involvement.  Included in this involvement is attendance at technical meetings, student chapters at universities, and participation at the IMAPS-NE spring symposium.  We feel it is of great importance to both students and the society to keep a strong relationship with educational programs, and are committed to promote this relationship through various means, including:

- Best student paper competition at the annual symposium

- Discounted rates for students to attend technical meetings

- Stipends awarded for abstracts submitted to spring symposium

- Research possibilities through donations of supplies (nano-tubes)

Congratulations to Huanan Duan

iMAPS New England 33^rd Annual Symposium and Exhibition Best Student Paper award winner

Left to Right: Tom Marinis, Wei Han, Huanan Duan, and Charles Brown

PD-DOPED MULTI-WALL CARBON NANOTUBES AS A H2 STORAGE MATERIAL

Huanan Duan, Ivan P. Mardilovich, Jianyu Liang, Yu Hua Ma, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Hydrogen is viewed as a promising candidate energy source to replace the conventional fossil fuel in facing the energy crisis.  It offers the long-term potential for an energy system that produces near-zero emissions and is based on abundantly available resources.  However, hydrogen storage is a major challenge in hydrogen energy development.  None of the current technologies satisfy all of the hydrogen storage attributes sought by manufacturers and end users. The efforts of our team focus on exploring higher-risk storage technologies involving advanced materials: carbon nanotubes.

Carbon nanotube doped with metal nanoparticles is expected to demonstrate desirable hydrogen storage characteristics given its high specific surface area, its high gravimetric storage capacity, and special interactions between carbon atoms and hydrogen molecules.  However, recent research results appear to be controversial.

The controls of uniformity, diameter distribution, alignment, and degree of crystallization of CNTs are of critical importance to get stable and reproducible H2 storage materials.  In our study, a template-assisted non-lithographic technique is employed to create highly ordered multi-wall carbon nanotube (MWCNT) arrays by chemical vapor deposition (CVD). Pd nanoparticles are deposited in MWCNTs by electroless deposition.  The Pd doped MWCNTs are tested for hydrogen storage properties.  Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) are used to study morphology and microstructure of Pd-doping MWCNTs.