“…The nucleation process on the surface of substrate is quite slow, which avoids the mixed and disorderly arrangement. The hydrothermal method has many advantages: i) this route is very versatile because the hydrothermal process occurs on a variety of materials, such as Ni(OH) 2 [46], MnO 2 [47], Co(OH) 2 [22,48], FeOOH [49], Cu(OH) 2 [50], ZnO [51], V 2 O 5 [52]; ii) the reaction parameters can be easily controlled including temperature, time and concentration, which would result in different morphologies, porosity and compositions of the final products [19,53] [58]), which offer an even higher porosity and mass-loading of the active layer.…”