Postgraduate students from China improve the operation of accumulators and solar panels

Postgraduate students from Chongqing University of Arts and Sciences continue to study at Kuzbass State Technical University as part of an international educational project. In 2021 the universities have combined resources for effective education of young specialists in the field of mechanical engineering, chemical technologies, mining machines and complexes under postgraduate programs. Currently, guests from the People's Republic of China are actively preparing for the defense of candidate theses and writing scientific papers under the guidance of teachers of the Kuzbass Polytech.

I have four postgraduate students from China majoring in «Inorganic Chemistry». They are engaged in problems of materials science: improvement of materials for solar panels and accumulators. All the work is aimed at replacing the chemical elements that are currently in use with cheaper analogues without losing quality. These directions are now trending, so the research has great prospects for application. Postgraduate students are very diligent, they hand in everything on time, participate in scientific conferences, write articles in highly rated scientific journals, – says the Director of the Institute of Chemical, Oil and Gas Technologies, Professor Tatiana Cherkasova.

Postgraduate chemistry students Sun Lingtao and Jin Rong are also writing their research papers under the guidance of Tatyana Cherkasova. The Chinese guests are working on improving the materials that make up solar panels and accumulators.

Jin Rong is writing a scientific qualification paper on «Obtaining and researching new metal catalysts for solar cells». Electrocatalysts are necessary for the origin of oxygen in metal-air accumulators and fuel cells. Currently, platinum (Pt) based catalysts are considered the most efficient, but since their cost is quite high, the development of low-cost and highly efficient analogs of this element is of interest to the scientific community. After conducting a number of studies, Jin Rong found that the most effective substitute for the platinum catalyst can be a catalyst with one Mn atom on a carbon carrier. With a weak Fenton reaction, higher stability and lower cost, such a catalyst would help make solar cells work most efficiently. Jin Rong is currently studying metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), and the postgraduate student's goal is to find a way to increase their surface area and macropores.

Sun Lintao, in turn, is engaged in research on «New catalytic materials for accumulators». Like Jin Rong, the graduate student is developing a low-cost analog of a platinum-based catalyst, but his research focuses specifically on the regulation of the structure, size and composition of polymer micelles in a closed reactor. This allows the pore size of the metal-organic frameworks to be regulated. The results of Sun Lintao's research in the future may become the basis for the development of a highly efficient oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) catalyst.

Taking into account that the relevance of solar energy is growing due to its environmental friendliness and resource intensity, the topics chosen by the Chinese postgraduate students are indeed relevant. In the future, they will pass the candidate examinations in history and philosophy of science, foreign language, as well as in special core disciplines. We wish the postgraduate students a successful completion of their research and a worthy defense of their candidate's thesis!