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The commercialization of lithium-ion batteries has intimately changed our lives and enabled portable electronic devices, which has revolutionized communications, entertainment, medicine, and more. After three decades of commercial development, researchers around the world are now pursuing major advances that would allow this technology to power the next generation of light-duty, electric, and hybrid-electric vehicles. If this goal is to be met, concerted advances in safety and cost, as well as cycle-life and energy densities, must be realized through advances in the properties of the highly correlated, but separate, components of lithium-ion energy-storage systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effect of pretreatment conditions on the oxidation state and activity of micelle-synthesized Pt nanoparticles supported on ZrO2 was studied for methanol decomposition and oxidation reactions. An O2-pretreatment is observed to be effective for producing clean, stable, and active nanoparticles. Pt-oxide species formed during such pretreatments were found to have little influence in methanol decomposition reactions due to their tendency to reduce. However, these same species are stable during methanol oxidation and appear to take part in a Mars-van Krevelen-type of process, in which bound-oxygen (nanoparticle shell) may be replenished with oxygen from the gas phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present here the decomposition of methanol over Pt nanoparticles supported on a series of oxide powders. The samples tested may be roughly grouped in two categories consisting of large (∼15–18 nm) and small (∼8–9 nm) Pt particles deposited on reducible (CeO2, TiO2) and non-reducible (SiO2, ZrO2, Al2O3) supports. The smallest particles (∼8 nm), deposited on ZrO2, were found to be cationic and the most active for the decomposition of methanol. Furthermore, the stability of metallic Pt and its oxides was observed to be dependent on the choice of support. In all Pt containing samples the reaction proceeds via he direct decomposition of methanol, as no significant amounts of by-products were detected in the experimental range of 100–300 °C. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]