The group of prof. Vladimir Konakov is focused on the development of the novel oxide (zirconia and ceria-based) for high- and intermediate temperature solid electrolytes (SE) and non-oxide powders for Selective Laser Melting (SLM) and non-shrinkable constructive ceramics via SLM for co-generative power sources. As a part of the group, in the past three years I participated in 11 projects. Among them, in 4 projects I was a head, like special president scholarship for young researches (2016-2018), grants of Saint Petersburg Government (fields of applied chemistry and materials), dedicated to the new materials for the electrochemical devices with high performance.

In order to obtain high phase stability, electrical and mechanical properties of zirconia and ceria based SE, mild chemistry techniques as freeze-drying, hydrothermal synthesis, co-precipitation in mixed solvents are used for ceramic nanosized low-agglomerated precursors manufacturing. In particular, recently, a novel scalable chryochemical technique for the manufacturing of zirconia and ceria solid electrolytes was suggested and patented (patent RU2600400). For that a “good” idea of using freeze-drying for nanosized powders manufacturing was proved in the “bad” СaO-ZrO2 system, known for lots of problems. The control of dispersity and microstructure on each manufacturing step allowed to obtain ceramics with refined microstructure, enhanced electrical conductivity (~10-1-10-2 Cm/cm at 1000K) and high sensing properties (5-7 mV deviation from Nernst equation at low pO2).