Thermal sprayed electrodes

DETAILED DESCRIPTION The above-discussed and other drawbacks and deficiencies of the prior art are overcome or alleviated by the method of the present invention, wherein thermal spray of active material feedstocks is used to fabricate porous electrodes for energy storage devices and energy conversion devices.
Active material feedstocks for thermal spray are readily available by chemical synthesis in aqueous solution at low temperature (<90.
degree.
C.
).
In an advantageous feature of the present invention, the active material feedstocks undergo a reprocessing step whereby they are uniformly coated with sulfur prior to thermal spray.
The sulfur coating prevents thermal decomposition of the active materials during the spraying process.
Thermal spray methods function with a wide variety of active material feedstocks, and are readily adaptable to continuous manufacturing processes.
In another advantageous feature of the present invention, the active material feedstock comprises nanostructured materials, which after thermal spray results in electrodes having nanostructured active materials.
The above-discussed and other features and advantages of the present invention will be appreciated and understood by those skilled in the art from the following detailed description and drawings.