High Voltage Thermal Cells

The battery lab of the Aero Propulsion and Power Laboratory, Wright Research and Development Center, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base has finished construction and fitting of a new dryroom facility. The facility contains all of the equipment necessary to fabricate and test thermal cells. Some of the first cells tested were simple transition metal oxides. An experiment has begun to reduce the solubility, volatility and mobility of these cathode materials by preparing and testing massive, relatively immobile cathode molecules. A good candidate for this is the vanadium series which forms rings, chains, clusters and Keggin compounds. The first three (3) compounds of this genre have been prepared: K/sub 3/V/sub 5/O/sub 14/, Na/sub 6/V//sub 10/O/sub 28/, K/sub7/[Ni/sup 4+/V/sub 13/O/sub30/]- Only the first of these compounds has been tested as a cathode material. The K/sub 3/V/sub 5/O/sub 14/ demonstrated better performance than V/sub 2/O/sub 5/ but it is not as good as the FeS/sub 2/ cells used for benchmarks.