Nanoengineering Energy Conversion and Storage Devices via Atomic Layer Deposition

Abstract

Nanostructured materials show a promising future in energy conversion and storage. However, different challenges shall be addressed to take the full advantages of nanomaterials, such as excess charge recombination sites yielded from large surface area and inefficient charge carrier separation because of poor material junctions in solar cells and solar water splitting cells, as well as high risk of surface side reactions and low active material density in batteries and supercapacitors. Considering its surface self‐limiting reaction mechanism, atomic layer deposition (ALD) enables the deposition of a thin film on high aspect ratio structures with a highly controllable manner (e.g., atomic accuracy and perfect conformity), which make it very suitable to overcome the key challenges associated with the size and dimension decrease of nanomaterials. In this review, the recent progress of the ALD application and processing in energy‐related devices is highlighted. Particular emphasis is placed on employing ALD for improving the device performance via synthesizing, modifying, or stabilizing their corresponding components. Finally, the challenges regarding the material synthesis and scalable manufacturing of the ALD technique are also discussed.

Review on Nanoarchitectured Current Collectors for Pseudocapacitors

“…Given that PCs aim to maintain the high power densities of supercapacitors while greatly increase the energy densities, various strategies thus have been proposed for taking full potentials of pseudocapacitive materials for energy storage . In particular, nanostructuration plays a dominant role in these developed strategies . A compact supercapacitor device basically contains positive and negative electrodes, electrolytes, a separator, and current collectors as well as case.…”

3D FTO/FTO‐Nanocrystal/TiO2 Composite Inverse Opal Photoanode for Efficient Photoelectrochemical Water Splitting

“…In the meantime, the conformal coating of such porous host skeleton with a uniform and continuous absorber layer is equally important to the PEC performance of the entire composite photoelectrode, which still remains a challenge currently. Atomic layer deposition (ALD), due to its self‐limiting surface reaction mechanism, has demonstrated its effectiveness in depositing conformal thin films over highly porous nanostructures . In particular, a pressure tuned‐stop flow ALD process has been utilized to deposit thin film on such highly porous 3D inverse opal structures in our previous study …”

“…Atomic layer deposition (ALD), due to its self-limiting surface reaction mechanism, has demonstrated its effectiveness in depositing conformal thin films over highly porous nanostructures. [34][35][36] In particular, a pressure tuned-stop flow ALD process has been utilized to deposit thin film on such highly porous 3D inverse opal structures in our previous study. [37] In this work, we report the design and fabrication of 3D fluorine-doped SnO 2 (FTO)/FTO-nanocrystal (NC)/TiO 2 composite inverse opal (IO) electrode for PEC water splitting by ALD TiO 2 on solution processed FTO/FTO-NC IO.…”

Boron Element Nanowires Electrode for Supercapacitors

“…[7][8][9][10][11][12][13] A research frontier is to develop flexible supercapacitors with good electrochemical and mechanical performance, where the integration of flexibility in supercapacitors is of great importance for powering various flexible electronics and enabling applications in multifunctional flexible electronics. [1,14,18] So far, intensive efforts are aimed at improving the performance of supercapacitor based on traditional active materials including carbon-based material, transitional metal-based material, and conducting polymers. Electrical double-layer capacitors (EDLCs) suffer from the low specific capacitance which constitutes a huge obstacle for increasing the energy density, whereas pseudocapacitors possess the higher specific capacitance but are confined by relatively poor cycling stability and long discharging time.…”

“…Electrical double-layer capacitors (EDLCs) suffer from the low specific capacitance which constitutes a huge obstacle for increasing the energy density, whereas pseudocapacitors possess the higher specific capacitance but are confined by relatively poor cycling stability and long discharging time. [1,14,18] So far, intensive efforts are aimed at improving the performance of supercapacitor based on traditional active materials including carbon-based material, transitional metal-based material, and conducting polymers. [1][2][3][4]7,8,19] Although some novel materials, including sulfides, selenides, etc., have been proposed to be supercapacitive materials, the pursuit of new categories of active materials as electrodes of supercapacitors remains a great challenge.…”