About

Thomas Adams is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Nuclear Engineering at Purdue University. His campus is located in West Lafayette, and his office email is adams30@purdue.edu. His unit and group affiliations include Nuclear Engineering. The provided page text does not include specific details about his research focus, background, or key contributions.

Research topics

• Engineering
• Materials science
• Nuclear engineering
• Composite material
• Chemistry
• Thermodynamics
• Electrical engineering
• Computer Science
• Forensic engineering
• Automotive engineering
• Chemical engineering
• Optoelectronics
• Nanotechnology

Selected publications

• Bridging the Safety-Performance Gap: A Comparative Study of Graphite versus Niobium Tungsten Oxide Anodes and Carbonate versus Ether Electrolytes for Lithium-Ion Batteries

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Efficient photovoltaics integrated with innovative Li-ion batteries for extreme (+ 80 oC to −105 oC) temperature operations

  Scientific Reports · 2025-03-25 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  Current pursuits for further exploration into extreme environments like aerospace, outer space, and Arctic conditions require matching energy harvesting and storage technologies that can efficiently operate in extreme conditions. While current systems utilize a variety of different battery chemistries, photovoltaics, and radioisotope power systems to power and store the required energy, at ultra-low temperatures (<-60 °C), current batteries have extremely low-capacity retention (< 20 %) and require extensive heating coils and thermal shielding to work when paired with photovoltaics. To simultaneously test both current and new types of whole photovoltaics (PV) and innovative Li-ion batteries (LIBs) at extreme temperatures (180 °C to -185 °C) in the research laboratory, an Integrated Photovoltaic and Battery (IntPB) system has been developed at Purdue University. The first IntPB allows for testing a variety of energy storage devices (Li-ion, Na-ion, K-ion batteries) and harvesting technologies (PV, radioisotope, thermoelectric), verifying their suitability when paired at a wide range of temperatures and charging protocols. A specially designed IntPB system allowed for testing either small-scale coin cells (10 mAh) or larger pouch cells (1 Ah) with polycrystalline silicon PV between 80 °C to -120 °C. It effectively charged the lithium metal battery using a niobium tungsten oxide cathode and 1 M LiFSI in cyclopentyl methyl ether electrolyte to comparable capacities. When discharged with the battery cycler, the battery provided similar capacities at a constant current discharge, thus ensuring that the system was able to charge/discharge equivalent amounts of energy. At 80 °C, -105 °C, and - 120 °C, the IntPB was able to charge/discharge 150 mAh g⁻¹, 30 mAh g⁻¹, and 6 mAh g⁻¹ capacity, respectively. This indicated that the pairing of the PV and battery was able to charge/discharge the battery at a wide range of temperatures that the system would be expected to experience in places such as the desert, Arctic, or outer space. Contrasting temperature effects in integrated PV-battery systems pose a significant challenge: PV efficiency improves at low temperatures due to increased semiconductor band gap, while LIB performance deteriorates due to sluggish Li-ion movement within the electrolyte and across interfaces, necessitating careful system optimization to balance enhanced PV output with limited battery storage capacity.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Tritium Power Sources Ranging from Nanowatts to Watts

  2024-01-01

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Flood forecasting in the US NOAA/National Weather Service

  Elsevier eBooks · 2024-10-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Evaluation of lithium as a tritium storage medium for betavoltaics

  Journal of Applied Physics · 2024-01-10 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Lithium foils were demonstrated to absorb surrogate protium for tritium-powered betavoltaics. 20 μm thick lithium foils were hole-punched from a ribbon of electrodeposited lithium on copper foil. The lithium foils were loaded with hydrogen in a custom Sievert apparatus where the pressure drop showed full hydriding at a hydrogen pressure of 2 bar and at all loading temperatures above the lithium melting point at 190, 200, 225, 250, and 300. Lithium hydride formation was confirmed with Raman spectroscopy after hydrogen loading. The kinetics of experimental hydride formation was compared to the diffusion-limited Mintz–Bloch model. While the Mintz–Bloch model showed good fit with the experimental loadings, the model overpredicted the loading kinetics starting at 250 °C and at higher temperatures. The overprediction was either caused by lithium hydride outgassing due to some reduction with some residual lithium hydroxide created from brief air exposure when sealing the lithium in the reactor or a transition from diffusion-limited hydride growth to surface or metal–hydride interface-limited hydride growth.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• An overview of continental and global scale hydrologic monitoring and prediction

  Elsevier eBooks · 2024-10-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Contributors

  Elsevier eBooks · 2024-10-01

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Introduction

  Elsevier eBooks · 2024-10-01

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR): The Last Steps to Launch

  2024-03-02 · 7 citations

  article

  As NASA & ISRO teams prepare to operate the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) to make unparalleled Earth observations, the spacecraft is undergoing integration & test of the spacecraft bus and radar payload to prepare for launch.NISAR is a multi-disciplinary Earth-observing dual-band radar mission being jointly developed by NASA and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). As a pathfinder for NASA’s Earth System Observatory (ESO), NISAR will make global measurements of land surface changes from its near-polar 12-day repeating orbit, for integration into Earth system models. NISAR provides a means of understanding spatially and temporally complex phenomena, ranging from ecosystem disturbances to ice sheet collapse and natural hazards including earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, and landslides. In addition to enabling scientific advances, NISAR will provide societally relevant data that will enable investments to protect human life and property.After several years of buildup and test at JPL, the NASA-developed L-band SAR, an ISRO-developed S-band SAR, a deployable 12m radar antenna, and an Engineering Payload have met the ISRO built spacecraft bus at the ISITE facility in Bangalore. While the System Integration & Test (SIT) activities at JPL integrated the L- and S- band SARs with the Engineering Payload, the integration of the bus in India has challenged both teams to understand how the other operates and work together towards a successful mission.In this year leading to launch, the team is:• Mechanically & electrically integrating the full spacecraft, including bus, payloads, and reflector antenna assembly. This includes integration of components inside the spacecraft bus in addition to the reflector antenna assembly and Radar Instrument Structure (RIS).• Testing the observatory in increasing scope & complexity of activities from checkouts to full scenarios, including faulted tests and environmental testing. Testing involved multiple organizations delivering command products and coordinated through an automated tool.• Preparing for operations through Operational Readiness Tests (ORTs) and compatibility testing. This includes development of a novel test venue to support these tests as well demonstrating data flow and coordination around the globe.• Combining an ISRO and JPL testbed at the U.R. Rao Satellite Center (URSC). The venue allows for risk reduction testing and fault scenario testing not possible in the flight venue. In addition, it can provide a valuable resource for launch and early operations testing. In parallelAlong the way, the team has dealt with some technical challenges requiring late integrations and rework, including regression testing, and replanning critical activities as the resources and plans shifted.This paper discusses the test results and design challenges of the final SIT campaign, the trials that are still ahead, and the verification and validation activities that were conducted through-out.

  PublisherDOI

• VALIDATION OF MINTZ-BLOCH MODEL FOR TITANIUM HYDRIDE THIN FILM LOADING

  The Proceedings of the International Conference on Nuclear Engineering (ICONE) · 2023-01-01

  articleOpen access

  Betavoltaics are direct energy conversion devices that deliver low, microwatt power for long-lasting, uninterruptable applications. Betavoltaics utilize beta particles, similarly to how photovoltaics utilizes photons, by absorbing energy from emitted particles into the semiconductor p-n junction that converts the kinetic energy into electrical energy. One of the viable radioisotopes for betavoltaics is tritium, which is gaseous at standard temperature and pressure. In order to properly utilize tritium for betavoltaics, tritium must be stored in a solid matrix via chemical bonding as a metal tritide. In order to manufacture high quality films, the kinetics of tritium uptake must be understood to evaluate the stress-strain fields and other material properties of the films during hydrogen loading. One model to predict tritium uptake in thin films is the diffusion-limited Mintz-Bloch model. In the Mintz-Bloch model, a tritide layer, more commonly known as a ”blocking layer”, grows at the active surface of the metal interacting with tritium. To reach the metal to chemically bond, tritium atoms must diffuse through the interstitials of the growing tritide layer. Even though the Mintz-Bloch model is proven to be descriptive for hydride layer growth in solid films, the kinetics of the growing hydride layer have not been verified in literature. This paper validates the Mintz-Bloch model by utilizing diffusion constants found in literature and comparing the model to three separate sets of experimental loadings by Shuggard, Efron and Adams. In all three sets of experimental data, the MintzBloch model followed closer with the experiment kinetics as the loading temperature approached 300°C. While the trend of initial parabolic trending to linear uptake showed well for all three experimental sets, the time to fully load a titanium thin film based on the Mintz-Bloch model was 48% short for Shuggard at 250°C, 20.11% short for Efron at 250°C and 14.6% short for Adams at 160°C.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Shripad T. Revankar

  Purdue University West Lafayette

  26 shared

• Vikas Tomar

  12 shared

• Vilas G. Pol

  Purdue University West Lafayette

  12 shared

• Sherry Chen

  NOAA National Weather Service

  11 shared

• Mihit H. Parekh

  Purdue University West Lafayette

  10 shared

• Darrell Cheu

  9 shared

• Randel L. Dymond

  Virginia Tech

  9 shared

• Bing Li

  University of Science and Technology Beijing

  7 shared

Awards & honors

• Purdue Engineering Distinguished Lecture Series
• Neil Armstrong Distinguished Visiting Professors
• Lillian Gilbreth Postdoctoral Fellowships at Purdue Engineer…