Air Products and Chemicals, Inc.

Daniel James Ragsdale

Reinaldo Mario Machado

Kerry R Berger

Krishnakumar Jambunathan

George H Smudde, Jr

David A Zatko

Kerry Renard Berger

The invention relates to the electrolysis of aqueous electrolyte solutions containing GeO; hydroxide and water with metal alloy electrodes, such as, copper or tin rich alloy electrodes with alloying elements such as Sn, Pb, Zn, Cu etc, to generate Germane (GeH). Cu-rich alloy electrodes have been demonstrated to increase the GeHcurrent efficiency by almost 20% compared to Cu metal electrodes. Germanium deposition has been found to be either absent or minimal by using Cu-rich alloy electrodes. Several different methods for maintaining the cell performance or restoring the cell performance after a reduction in current efficiency over time, have been identified. A titration-based method for the analysis of the electrolyte, to obtain the concentration of GeOand the concentration of hydroxide has also been disclosed.

Electrodes for electrolytic germane process

The present invention is directed to a method of detecting trace levels of contained interactive gas, such as oxygen, in gases containing trace levels of interactive gas, such as oxygen, by doping a known low level amount of interactive gas (i.e., oxygen) into the detection apparatus to saturate interactive gas reactive or adsorptive sites in the apparatus, thus allowing the accurate, reproducible and responsive detection of contained interactive gas. More particularly, the present invention dopes a carrier gas of a gas chromatograph with low levels of oxygen in order to detect contained trace oxygen in a sample of a gas being analyzed for contained trace oxygen.

Enhanced sensitivity for oxygen and other interactive gases in sample

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Coopersburg, PA, United States of America

Daniel James Ragsdale