Poor electrical conductivity and mechanical instability are two major obstacles to realizing high performance of MnO2 as pseudocapacitor material. The construction of unique hierarchical core-shell nanostructures, therefore, plays an important role in the efficient enhancement of the rate capacity and the stability of this material. We herein report the fabrication of a hierarchical α-MnO2 nanowires@ultrathin δ-MnO2 nanosheets core-shell nanostructure by adopting a facile and practical solution-phase technique. The novel hierarchical nanostructures are composed of ultrathin δ-MnO2 nanosheets with a few atomic layers growing well on the surface of the ultralong α-MnO2 nanowires. The first specific capacitance of hierarchical core-shell nanostructure reached 153.8 F g(-1) at the discharge current density of as high as 20 A g(-1), and the cycling stability is retained at 98.1% after 10,000 charge-discharge cycles, higher than those in the literature. The excellent rate capacity and stability of the hierarchical core-shell nanostructures can be attributed to the structural features of the two MnO2 crystals, in which a 1D α-MnO2 nanowire core provides a stable structural backbone and the ultrathin 2D δ-MnO2 nanosheet shell creates more reactive active sites. The synergistic effects of different dimensions also contribute to the superior rate capability.

We report a facile and simple strategy to synthesize freestanding Co(3)O(4) nanosheets on conductive substrates. The as-prepared product shows two-dimensional hexagons in morphology with mesoporous inside architecture.

Biomacromolecules and their assemblies have the unique ability for biomimetic promotion of the formation of novel and functional nanomaterials. In this work, artificial peptide nanofibers were created with a special designed peptide molecule that contains complex motif sequences and then further metallized to synthesize nanofiber-based silver nanowires. A novel hybrid nanomaterial was obtained successfully by assembling the prepared silver nanowires on graphene nanosheets, and its potential application in nonenzymatic electrochemical H 2 O 2 sensing was explored. This fabricated sensor based on graphene and silver nanowires exhibits high sensitivity and selectivity, low detection limit, and wide linear range for the determination of H 2 O 2 .

Olivine LiFePO4 with nanoplate, rectangular prism nanorod and hexagonal prism nanorod morphologies with a short b-axis were successfully synthesized by a solvothermal in glycerol and water system. The influences of solvent composition on the morphological transformation and electrochemical performances of olivine LiFePO4 are systematically investigated by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy and galvanostatic charge-discharge tests. It is found that with increasing water content in solvent, the LiFePO4 nanoplates gradually transform into hexagonal prism nanorods that are similar to the thermodynamic equilibrium shape of the LiFePO4 crystal. This indicates that water plays an important role in the morphology transformation of the olivine LiFePO4. The electrochemical performances vary significantly with the particle morphology. The LiFePO4 rectangular prism nanorods (formed in a glycerol-to-water ratio of 1:1) exhibit superior electrochemical properties compared with the other morphological particles because of their moderate size and shorter Li(+) ion diffusion length along the [010] direction. The initial discharge capacity of the LiFePO4@C with a rectangular prism nanorod morphology reaches to 163.8 mAh g(-1) at 0.2 C and over 75 mAh g(-1) at the high discharging rate of 20 C, maintaining good stability at each discharging rate.

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