Multidimension‐Controllable Synthesis of Ant Nest‐Structural Electrode Materials with Unique 3D Hierarchical Porous Features toward Electrochemical Applications

Abstract

Hierarchical porous materials (HPM) have been widely used to enhance electrochemical performance in different fields of application, since their porous structures benefit electrolyte infiltration and ion diffusion. However, the realization of multidimension-controllable synthesis of HPM, including material category, material components, supporting substrates, as well as pore sizes/ distributions, is still a huge challenge. Herein, a novel concept is proposed, for the first time, on the geometry structure of HPM bioinspired by natural ant nests, which features 3D interlaced and well-interconnected porous structures. Moreover, a facile and universal approach is developed to the multidimensioncontrollable synthesis of ant nest-structural HPM. Further investigation shows that the in situ construction of carbon-based ant nests onto porous current collectors to fabricate the integrated electrode for supercapacitors could induce nearly 70% and 45% enhancement on the specific capacitance compared to the common powder and freestanding materials, respectively. Moreover, this synthesis route can be facilely extended to obtain the ant neststructural CuO x , which exhibits fivefold enhancement in sensitivity for glucose detection. Such biomimetic hierarchical porous architectures are of great significance in the field of electrochemical applications.

A flexible metallic TiC nanofiber/vertical graphene 1D/2D heterostructured as active electrocatalyst for advanced Li–S batteries

“…These results confirm the successful fabrication of VG/TiC nanofibers using the current in situ growth process. Figure S4 shows the Ti 2p XPS spectrum from TiO 2 and the VG/TiC nanofiber 55,56 . The Ti 2p spectrum of TiO 2 nanofiber reveals a typical double peak corresponding to Ti 2p 3/2 and Ti 2p 1/2 of Ti–O bond, located at 458.6 and 464.0 eV, respectively.…”

Template-Free Synthesis of One-Dimensional g-C3N4 Chain Nanostructures for Efficient Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution

“…from the (αhv)1/2 vs. photon energy (hv) plot ( Hou et al, 2020 ; Li et al, 2020d ; Wang et al, 2020a ; Zhang et al, 2020a ; Zhang Y. et al, 2020 ), the optical bandgap of chain g-C 3 N 4 and bulk g-C 3 N 4 was calculated to be approximate 2.88 and 2.93 eV, respectively. When the particle size descends to a certain value, the electron energy level near the Fermi energy level of the metal changes from quasi-continuous to discrete energy level ( Miao et al, 2019 ; Huang et al, 2020b ; Wu et al, 2020 ; Zhang S. et al, 2020 ), and the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) and lowest unoccupied molecular orbital energy level (LUMO) of the nano-semiconductor particles have discontinuous energy gap, which leads to the blue shift of the chain g-C 3 N 4 .…”

Photothermal Effect of Superparamagnetic Fe3O4 Nanoparticles Irradiated by Near-Infrared Laser

“…In recent years, nanomaterials have been widely used in photocatalysis [1][2][3] and electrochemical applications [4]. With recent nanotechnology developments, more and more nanomaterials find their practical as well as potential applications in biomedicine [5][6][7][8][9].…”