Recently, sulfide solid electrolytes with high Li+ ion conductivities of 10^-3-10^-2 S cm^-1, which are comparable to those of organic liquid electrolytes, have been developed. Sulfide glass-ceramics in the system Li₂S-P₂S₅ are promising solid electrolytes for all-solid-state lithium cells because of their high conductivity and wide electrochemical window. Sulfide electrolytes have another merit of achieving intimate solid/solid contacts by only cold-press without high-temperature sintering. All-solid-state lithium batteries using sulphide electrolytes are expected as a next-generation battery with high safety and reliability. The possible use of active materials with high capacity such as sulfur positive electrode and lithium negative electrode, which are difficult to use in a liquid electrolyte cell, is another advantage of all-solid-state batteries. Here, characterization of electrochemical performance and reaction mechanism for all-solid-state cells with the combination of sulfide glass-ceramic electrolytes and several kinds of active materials were reported. Several approaches to forming a favourable electrode-electrolyte interface were also demonstrated.

グラフェンの報告以降, 層状化合物の単層剥離が新規なナノ物質を創製する技術として注目され, 近年研究が盛んに行われている。中でも, 酸化物などに代表される無機ナノシートは究極の2次元性と共に, 組成, 構造, 機能の多様性を具備しており, 2次元ナノ物質の新しい舞台として注目されている。本稿では, 無機版あるいはセラミックス版のグラフェンといえる酸化物ナノシートを取り上げ, 最近の研究動向と共に, ナノシートをベースとしたキャパシタ技術や電池材料への応用について紹介したい。

As more and more companies handle increasingly refined high-grade products, further evolution in powder evaluation methods are essential to match the enhancement of production process and maintain quality control.

Development of new products should evolve hand in hand with the evaluation process. The following is a report regarding our new evaluation equipment which is developed accordingly to the growing needs of powder evaluation.

Particulate design means particle size control or surface modification for preparing functional particles.

Preparation of composite particles is also included in this research category. This article demonstrates recent successful results on particulate design of liposomal particles for preparing novel drug delivery systems in oral, pulmonary and ocular administration of drug. These results demonstrated that surface modification of liposomes with polymers and their particle size control can much improve the drug delivery function of liposomal carriers. Each result in particulate design research may lead to effective drug delivery and development of non-invasive drug delivery system of liposomal systems. In the research of pharmaceutical powders for solid dosage form preparation, particle design of pharmaceutical excepients can improve the compaction property in the objective powder formulation. This result demonstrated a novel preparation method of oral disintegration tablets, which is one of the most interesting dosage forms as a new category of tablet for good patient compliance.

Electrophoretic deposition (EPD) is a colloidal process wherein ceramic bodies are directly shaped from a stable colloid suspension by a dc electric field. Compared to other advanced shaping techniques, the EPD process is very versatile since it can be modified easily for a specific application. The EPD is also gaining increasing interest as a processing technique for production of novel inorganic nanostructured and nanoscale materials. In this paper, the deposition mechanism of the EPD process and its application on SOFC is introduced.

A mechanical particle composite process was applied to develop several kinds of advanced ceramics. Nanoparticles were stuck on a larger particles and they were well dispersed in powder mixtures. In most cases, microstructure of the developed advanced ceramics was very uniform. CNT-TiO₂ nanocomposite particles for electrically conductive CNT-dispersed Si₃N₄ ceramics from, AlN-Y₂O₃ nanocomposite paritcles for AlN ceramics having highly electrical insulation, ZnO-Al₂O₃ nanocomposite particle for ZnO ceramics with highly electrical conductivity, Al₂O₃-carbon black nanocoposite particles for pore size and morphology-controlled porous Al₂O₃ ceramics, and BaCO₃-TiO₂ nanocomposite particles for synthesis of tetragonal BaTiO₃ nanoparticles having highly crystallinity were prepared by the mechanical particle composite process. It was shown that the mechanical particle composite process is very effective in the microstructure control and improvement of many kinds of properties of advanced ceramics.

Beads motion in a stirred mill having slurry was simulated by the Discrete Element Method (DEM), enabling to calculate the impact energy of beads. The impact energy of beads is known to be well correlated with the grinding rate constant, therefore, it was monitored as an effective index of grinding performance in the simulation work. The present work is to investigate effect of the pin configuration, particularly, the number of pins attached on the agitator on the beads motion as well as the impact energy. We have found that the beads motion is dependent on the number of pins, and the impact energy reaches the maximum value at 8 in number of pins under the present condition. In addition, the maximum value under the impact energy is shifted towards large number of pins as the beads filling ratio increases. A new simultaneous simulation of dynamic and breakage behavior of particles has been developed and compared with those of experiment. The simulation results agree well with experimental ones.

Coal is very important energy resource now and for the future, because minable reserves of coal are more abundant than other fossil fuel. Powder technology is one of the most useful key technology for coal utilization from coal mining process to flue gas treatment process after coal utilization for power generation.

In this paper, the role of powder technology in conventional pulverized coal combustion power station is introduced at first. And the development tendency of powder technology for the improvement of conventional pulverized coal combustion power station and the development and progress of higher performance new type power generation system using coal gasification process are discussed.

In recent years, the fine particle procession technology has been utilized widely in various fields such as vehicle, electronic, food, pharmaceutical and biotechnology. On the other hand, the appearance of innovative equipment is expected significantly, in order to obtain the high added value and improve the quality of the final products.

In this paper, we introduce principle, structure, feature and experimental data on the latest powder processing machines for grinding, classification, sphericalization, compositing and drying which we developed in the past few years.