Adv Colloid Interface Sci
September 2024
Over the past decade, MXenes, a novel class of advanced 2D nanomaterials, have manifested as a prominent electrode material with diverse applications. Their unique layered structures, negative zeta potential, charge carrier mobility, mechanical properties, adjustable bandgap, hydrophilicity, metallic nature, and surface chemistry collectively contribute to the abundance of active redox sites on the surface and a reduction in the ion diffusion pathway. Despite such promising attributes of MXene, challenges like aggregation and restacking reduce the accessibility of active surface sites for electrolyte ions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFACS Appl Mater Interfaces
May 2024
Lithium-ion battery electrodes are typically manufactured via slurry casting, which involves mixing active material particles, conductive carbon, and a polymeric binder in a solvent, followed by casting and drying the coating on current collectors (Al or Cu). These electrodes are functional but still limited in terms of pore network percolation, electronic connectivity, and mechanical stability, leading to poor electron/ion conductivities and mechanical integrity upon cycling, which result in battery degradation. To address this, we fabricate trichome-like carbon-iron fabrics via a combination of electrospinning and pyrolysis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFElectrophoretic deposition (EPD) is a highly convenient and demonstrated industrial operation for the manufacture of surface coatings. Recent years are seeing increasing evidence in using this technique to produce energy storage electrodes (notably for lithium-ion batteries, solid-state devices, supercapacitors, and flow batteries), but their advancement for industrialisation remains unclear. Using activated carbon (AC) as an exemplary supercapacitor material, this study reports the practical aspects of porous energy storage electrodes produced by the EPD technique.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHybrid redox flow cells (HRFC) are key enablers for the development of reliable large-scale energy storage systems; however, their high cost, limited cycle performance, and incompatibilities associated with the commonly used carbon-based electrodes undermine HRFC's commercial viability. While this is often linked to lack of suitable electrocatalytic materials capable of coping with HRFC electrode processes, the combinatory use of nanocarbon additives and carbon paper electrodes holds new promise. Here, by coupling electrophoretically deposited nitrogen-doped graphene (N-G) with carbon electrodes, their surprisingly beneficial effects on three types of HRFCs, namely, hydrogen/vanadium (RHVFC), hydrogen/manganese (RHMnFC), and polysulfide/air (S-Air), are revealed.
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