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© The Royal Society of Chemistry. In this study, self-prepared nanostructured CuO electrodes show no capacity decay for 40 cycles at 0.1C in Li metal cells. The reaction mechanisms of the CuO electrodes are investigated. With the help of in situ EIS, in situ XRD, TEM, XAS, SQUID, IC and GC-MS, it is found that the as-prepared CuO electrode undergoes significant phase and composition changes during the initial lithiation, with the transformation of CuO to nano-crystalline Cu. During the 1st delithiation, Cu is inhomogeneously oxidized, which yields a mixture of Cu2O, Cu2−xO and Cu. The incomplete conversion reaction during the 1st cycle is accompanied by the formation and partial decomposition of the solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) as the side reactions. Nevertheless, from the 1st to the 5th delithiation, the oxidation state of Cu approaches +2. After an additional formation step, the transformation to Cu and back to Cu2−xO remains stable during the subsequent long-term cycling with no electrolyte decomposition products detected. The LiNi1/3Mn1/3Co1/3O2 (NMC-111)/CuO full cells show high capacities (655.8 ± 0.6, 618.6 ± 0.9 and 290 ± 2 mA h g−1 at 0.1, 1 and 10C, respectively), within the voltage range of 0.7-4.0 V at 20 °C and a high capacity retention (85% after 200 cycles at 1C).

The present work builds on investigations of cold gas-sprayed Al coatings on Al2O3, which strongly indicated that heteroepitaxial growth is a possible mechanism supporting the adhesion between metal and ceramic at their interface. The present study was focused on the deposition of Al on further ceramic substrates (AlN, Si3N4 and SiC). In particular, it should be clarified whether the different ionicity of the chemical bonding in these substrate materials influences the interface formation or not. Aluminum coatings were deposited alternatively by using cold-gas spraying (CGS) and magnetron sputtering. In CGS coatings, the effect of substrate roughness, substrate temperature and powder fraction on the adhesion of the coating was investigated. The magnetron-deposited coatings were used to evaluate the role of the heteroepitaxy in the interface formation and to identify microstructure defects in the metal/ceramic interface, which are caused solely by the lattice misfit between the counterparts and not by the impact-induced deformation that is typical for cold gas-sprayed coatings. Interface characterization was conducted by scanning electron and high resolution transmission electron microscopies combined with XRD.

The present work summarizes the most important results of a research project dealing with the comprehensive!! investigation of the bonding mechanisms between cold sprayed Al coatings and various poly- and monocrystalline ceramic substrates (Al2O3, AlN, Si3N4, SiC, MgF2). Due to their exceptional combination of properties, metallized ceramics are gaining more and more importance for a wide variety of applications, especially in electronic engineering. Cold spraying provides a quick, flexible and cost-effective one-step process to apply metallic coatings on ceramic surfaces. However, since most of the existing cold spray-related publications focus on metallic substrates, only very little is known about the bonding mechanisms acting between cold sprayed metals and ceramic substrates. In this paper, the essential factors influencing the bonding strength in such composites are identified. Besides mechanical tensile strength testing, a thorough analysis of the coatings and especially the metal/ceramic interfaces was conducted by means of HRTEM, FFT, STEM, EDX, EELS, XRD and EBSD. The influence of substrate material, substrate temperature and particle size is evaluated with regard to the observed bonding behavior. The results suggest that, apart from mechanical interlocking, the adhesion of cold sprayed metallic coatings on ceramics is based on a complex interplay of different mechanisms such as quasi-adiabatic shearing, static recrystallization as well as heteroepitaxial growth.