Suitability Of Electrolytes Research Articles

Suitability of electrolytes and anodic dissolution behavior of 17-4 PH stainless steel

17-4 PH SS alloy finds widespread applications in turbine blades, power plants, marine and chemical industries. However, some of its mechanical properties such as high tensile and fatigue strength, good toughness, high hardness and formability make its machinability poor. Thus, non-conventional machining processes such as electrochemical micromachining (ECMM), which removes the material by chemical dissolution, has better potential to fabricate micro features of high surface quality. However, the ECMM behavior of 17-4 PH SS alloy has not been exhaustively explored yet. It is very important to understand the regular dissolution patterns to improve machining stability and machined surface quality. Therefore, the present work aims at studying the suitability of different electrolytes in ECMM process for the fabrication of micro features with better dimensional accuracy and surface quality on 17-4 PH SS alloy. The electrolytes used in the experimentation are an aqueous solution of NaBr, NaCl, NaNO3and a compound aqueous solution of NaCl + NaNO3. The performance characteristics such as radial overcut, dimple depth and some aspects of surface integrity have been investigated. Experimental results showed that better dimensional accuracy and surface quality have been achieved with NaCl + NaNO3electrolyte owing to the combined properties of passive and non-passive electrolytes.

Investigation into Suitability of Electrolytes during Surface Micro-texturing by Electrochemical Micromachining

This article highlights the methodical investigation of suitability of various electrolytes on stainless steel by maskless electrochemical micromachining for generation of micro circular pattern. A well planned experimental setup consisting of maskless electrochemical micromachining (EMM) cell with other accessories has been designed and developed for conducting the experiments. A single masked tool with SU-8 2150 mask can generate many high quality textured samples economically. Influences of machining voltage, inter electrode gap, duty ratio and pulse frequency are investigated on material removal rate (MRR) and machining depth of micro circular pattern using three different electrolytes, i.e., NaCl, NaNO3 and NaCl+NaNO3. Out of these three electrolytes, only mixed electrolyte of NaCl+NaNO3 has been preferred as a best electrolyte based on uniform geometrical shape and controlled depth. The minimum size of the texture is 622.45 μm in mean diameter and 50.2 μm in mean depth.

Effect of solvent blending on cycling characteristics of lithium

The suitability of electrolytes using mixed solvents has been examined for ambient temperature, rechargeable lithium batteries. Sulfolane (S) and dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) have been used as base solvents because of their high permittivity, and ethers such as 1,2-dimethoxyethane (DME) have been blended as a low viscosity co- solvent. This blending has been found to yield electrolytes with a high conductivity, and maximum values are observed in solutions with 40 – 90 mol% ether. The cycling characteristics of lithium are also improved by blending the ethers. The coulombic efficiencies on a nickel substrate are ⩾80% in S-DME/LiPF 6 and DMSO-DME/LiPF 6 solutions. The lithium electrode characteristics are markedly dependent on the type of co- solvent ether, as well as on the electrolytic salt. The results of the conductance behaviour and the electrode characteristics are discussed in terms of ionic structure in the mixed solvent and the state of the electrode/electrolyte interphase.