India's Quest for Energy Security

There are no easy answers to India's quest for energy security with environmental sustainability. The electric power sector appears to be more  manageable, given India's thrust in nuclear power. The coming decades might see large additions in nuclear power generation capacity without
significantly increasing the CO2 emissions. The Indo-US nuclear agreement provides an opportunity to import LWRs and gives India time to commercialize the FBR and thorium-based reactors. At the same time, it will help to reduce India's dependence on coal to some extent.

Rechargeable Sodium-Ion Battery: High-Capacity Ammonium Vanadate Cathode with Enhanced Stability at High Rate

A sodium-ion battery (NIB) cathode performance based on ammonium vanadate is demonstrated here as high capacity, long cycle life and good rate capability. The simple preparation process and morphology study enable us to explore this electrode as suitable NIB cathode. Furthermore, density functional theory (DFT) calculation is envisioned for the NH4V4O10 cathode and three possible sodium arrangements in the structure are depicted for the first time. Relevant NIB-related properties have been derived like average voltage, lattice constants and atomic coordinates etc.

BANDGAP ENGINEERING OF FUNCTIONALIZED POLYETHYLENE OXIDE (PEO) ELECTROLYTE

Electrolytes enable conduction of ions in a battery across the electrodes. One of the most important properties of an electrolyte material is its electrochemical window, which determines overall safety of the battery. Electrochemical window (also known as HOMO LUMO gap or bandgap) is calculated in the present work for polyethylene oxide (PEO) with different chemistries using a combination of Hartree-Fock and density functional theory (DFT) techniques. The aim is to study how the bandgap can be varied with different functional groups added to the polymer.

Moving from Li to Na ion intercalation battery: electronic charge transfer mechanism in cathodes studied with ab-initio methods

Sodium intercalation batteries might prove to be a viable alternative of lithium ion batteries, which is both expensive and in short supply due to unavailability of lithium .Renewable energy sources being crucial to India's energy future, there is a huge need to develop scalable and cost effective storage technology with earth abundant materials to provide load balancing. Moving from lithium to sodium ion intercalation materials, electrochemical properties change significantly and electrochemical potential of intercalation drops.