Bioinspired polymeric woods

Yu, Zhi‐Long; Yang, Ning; Zhou, Lichuan; Ma, Zhiyuan; Zhu, YinBo; Lu, Yuyang; Qin, Bing; Xing, Weiyi; Ma, Tao; Li, Sicheng; Gao, Huai‐Ling; Wu, Huan; Yu, Shu‐Hong

doi:10.1126/sciadv.aat7223

Cited by 246 publications

(177 citation statements)

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“…Therefore, the direct transformation of natural wood into nanostructured catalysts is advantageous owing to the ease of processing and the cost‐effectiveness of the process as well as because the natural hierarchical structure of wood can be readily exploited in this manner. In fact, it is significantly more difficult to bottom‐up fabricate such a hierarchical structure from molecular precursors as it requires the use of templates . As shown in Figure a, the proposed top‐down approach for the bulk transformation of raw wood involves the selective hydrolysis of cellulose into soluble monosaccharides by an enzyme.…”

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confidence: 99%

Hierarchically Porous Carbon Plates Derived from Wood as Bifunctional ORR/OER Electrodes

et al. 2019

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oxygen evolution reaction or OER) processes. [1][2][3][4][5] To avoid the use of costly noble metal catalysts, nitrogen-doped porous carbon materials are proposed as the electrode materials in these batteries since they can be derived from naturally abundant biomass. The performance of these porous carbon materials as electrodes depends on the chemistry that results in the generation of OER-active pyridinic N and ORR-active quaternary N groups in a high density as well as the porosity of the materials. [6] This is because these factors determine the extent of exposure of the active sites to the relevant chemical species such as O 2 , OH − , and H 2 O and help prevent the rapid clogging of the planar electrode surface. [7][8][9][10] SiO 2 [8,11,12] and Al 2 O 3[13] microbeads have been employed widely as templates for generating nanopores in carbon-based catalysts. However, this requires multiple steps such as the bottom-up synthesis of the catalysts from carbon precursors as well as etching and purification processes to remove the templates, which increases the cost for mass production. [14][15][16][17][18] In addition, porous carbon materials synthesized by bottom-up methods are generally in the powder form and are thus not self-supporting. Thus, the fabrication of air electrodes requires an additional process, wherein the powder carbon materials are electrosprayed onto carbon cloth/paper, which then lead to the inevitable decreases Porous carbon electrodes have emerged as important cathode materials for metal-air battery systems. However, most approaches for fabricating porous carbon electrodes from biomass are highly energy inefficient as they require the breaking down of the biomass and its subsequent reconstitution into powder-like carbon. Here, enzymes are explored to effectively hydrolyze the partial cellulose in bulk raw wood to form a large number of nanopores, which helps to maximally expose the inner parts of the raw wood to sufficiently dope nitrogen onto the carbon skeletons during the subsequent pyrolysis process. The resulting carbons exhibit excellent catalytic activity with respect to the oxygen reduction and oxygen evolution reactions. As-fabricated cellulosedigested, carbonized wood plates are mechanically strong, have high conductivity, and contain a crosslinked network and natural ion-transport channels and can be employed directly as metal-free electrodes without carbon paper, polymer binders, or carbon black. When used as metal-free cathodes in zincair batteries, they result in a specific capacity of 801 mA h g −1 and an energy density of 955 W h kg −1 with the long-term stability of the batteries being as high as 110 h. This work paves the way for the ready conversion of abundant biomass into high-value engineering products for energy-related applications.The ORCID identification number(s) for the author(s) of this article can be found under https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.201900341.Rechargeable Zn-air batteries have emerged as a promising technology for coping with future energy demands owin...

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Hierarchically Porous Carbon Plates Derived from Wood as Bifunctional ORR/OER Electrodes

et al. 2019

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“…Obviously, such high extrusion pressure would bring forward the critical challenges and requirements to the mechanical stabilities of the nanoelectrodes for supercapacitors and batteries. As known, the cellular solids with honeycombs are much stiffer and stronger to manifest high compressive strength when loaded at the out-of-plane direction (i.e., along the cell axis) than at the in-plane direction 15,16 , thus nanoindentation experiments have been further conducted for characterizing the nanomechanical properties of the HAN. The Young's modulus of the HAN with hexagonal cell arrangement, 400 nm inter-cell spacing and only 16 nm cell wall thickness are obtained in the range of 1.41-3.22 GPa measured at five different positions ( Supplementary Fig.…”

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confidence: 99%

Nanoelectrode design from microminiaturized honeycomb monolith with ultrathin and stiff nanoscaffold for high-energy micro-supercapacitors

et al. 2020

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Downsizing the cell size of honeycomb monoliths to nanoscale would offer high freedom of nanostructure design beyond their capability for broad applications in different fields. However, the microminiaturization of honeycomb monoliths remains a challenge. Here, we report the fabrication of microminiaturized honeycomb monoliths-honeycomb alumina nanoscaffold-and thus as a robust nanostructuring platform to assemble active materials for microsupercapacitors. The representative honeycomb alumina nanoscaffold with hexagonal cell arrangement and 400 nm inter-cell spacing has an ultrathin but stiff nanoscaffold with only 16 ± 2 nm cell-wall-thickness, resulting in a cell density of 4.65 × 10 9 cells per square inch, a surface area enhancement factor of 240, and a relative density of 0.0784. These features allow nanoelectrodes based on honeycomb alumina nanoscaffold synergizing both effective ion migration and ample electroactive surface area within limited footprint. A microsupercapacitor is finally constructed and exhibits record high performance, suggesting the feasibility of the current design for energy storage devices.

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“…The porous PVA matrix was prepared by unidirectional freezing and low‐temperature curing of predesigned polymeric matrices 33,34 . First, PVA solution (containing crosslinking agent) was poured into a preassigned T‐shaped vessel.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Then unidirectional freezing was used, in which the temperature difference was applied using liquid N 2 , and unidirectional ice crystals induced a cellular structure in the PVA liquid precursors (Figure 2A). 34 This hierarchical cellular structure was fixed after PVA precursors curing at −20°C and freeze‐drying. Then PPy was surface‐polymerized to enhance the light absorption of this synthetic tree.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The porous PVA matrix was prepared by unidirectional freezing and low-temperature curing of predesigned polymeric matrices. 33,34 First, PVA solution (containing crosslinking agent) was poured into a preassigned T-shaped vessel. Then unidirectional freezing was used, in which the temperature difference was applied using liquid N 2 , and unidirectional ice crystals induced a cellular structure in the PVA liquid precursors (Figure 2A).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Designing a bioinspired synthetic tree by unidirectional freezing for simultaneous solar steam generation and salt collection

Shao

Tang

et al. 2020

EcoMat

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Solar steam generation with thermal localization was recently proposed for highly efficient solar‐thermal desalination. However, to achieve high steam productivity with long term stability remains a critical challenge due to salt accumulation at the evaporation surface. Here, we designed a T‐shaped synthetic tree that could simultaneously achieve high steam productivity and salt collection with the structure characteristics of interfacial thermal evaporation, ambient energy harvesting and edge‐preferential crystallizing. Under 1 sun, the synthetic tree exhibited a steady water evaporation rate of 2.03 kg m−2 hours−1 over 60 hours, achieving solar thermal efficiency of 75%. Salt was continuously rejected at the edge of the evaporator with a steady collection rate of 59.879 g m−2 hours−1, which did not affect water evaporation. This new design principle to simultaneously harvest water and salt provides a new avenue for solar energy utilization.

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Bioinspired polymeric woods

Abstract: Bioinspired polymeric woods with excellent overall performance can be fabricated by a self-assembly and curing process of resins.

Cited by 246 publications

References 46 publications

Hierarchically Porous Carbon Plates Derived from Wood as Bifunctional ORR/OER Electrodes

Hierarchically Porous Carbon Plates Derived from Wood as Bifunctional ORR/OER Electrodes

Nanoelectrode design from microminiaturized honeycomb monolith with ultrathin and stiff nanoscaffold for high-energy micro-supercapacitors

Designing a bioinspired synthetic tree by unidirectional freezing for simultaneous solar steam generation and salt collection

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