This article highlights recent advances in micro-sized silicon anode materials composed of silicon nanoscale building blocks for lithium-ion batteries. These materials show great potential in practical applications since they combine good cycling stability, high rate performance, and high volumetric capacity. Different preparation methods are introduced and the features and performance of the resulting materials are discussed. Key take-away points are interspersed through the discussion, including comments on the roles of the nanoscale building blocks. Finally, we discuss current challenges and provide an outlook for future development of micro-sized silicon-based anode materials.
Download full-text PDF |
Source |
---|---|
http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/c5nr07625k | DOI Listing |
Soft Matter
March 2025
Department of Chemistry "Ugo Schiff" and CSGI, University of Florence, via della Lastruccia 3, Sesto Fiorentino, Florence, Italy.
Polyurethanes are largely employed in various fields such as building, insulation and adhesive industries, but there is the constant need to develop sustainable formulations using "green" components and feasible processes. Here, a new series of sustainable castor oil and epoxidized castor oil-based (CO/EpCO) polyurethane networks was synthetized and characterized. The added epoxy functions react with isocyanates forming oxazolidinone linkages in the gels' network, reducing the gelation time from over 3 hours up to 0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNanoscale
March 2025
KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Department of Fiber and Polymer Technology, School of Engineering Sciences in Chemistry, Biotechnology and Health, Teknikringen 56, SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden.
Biobased cellulose nanofibrils (CNFs) constitute important building blocks for biomimetic, nanostructured materials, and considerable potential exists in their hybridization with tailorable polymeric nanoparticles. CNFs naturally assemble into oriented, fibrillar structures in their cross-section. This work shows that polymeric nanoparticle additives have the potential to increase or decrease orientation of these cellulose structures, which allows the control of bulk mechanical properties.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNanoscale Horiz
March 2025
Joint International Research Laboratory of Information Display and Visualization, School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China.
Integrated photonics has emerged as a pivotal technology in the advancement of next-generation computing and communication devices. Thermal optical phase shifters (OPSs) have been widely used to realize a tunable Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) and a micro-ring resonator (MRR), which are the building bricks for the LSI/VLSI photonic integrated circuits. Due to the thermal crosstalk and the low modulation efficiency, thermal OPSs have large-scale size and high power consumption.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNano Lett
March 2025
Anhui Provincial Engineering Center for High-Performance Biobased Nylon, School of Materials and Chemistry, Anhui Agricultural University, Hefei, Anhui 230036, P. R. China.
The construction of high-strength hydrogels is essential for engineering applications but is often limited by poor durability under stress. Current post-treatment methods are inefficient and time consuming. Inspired by muscle building, we propose a green, efficient, and synergistic enhancement method.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFACS Nano
March 2025
Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37830 United States.
Flexoelectric fields produced by strong strain gradients at the nanoscale couple to ferroelectric polarization, promoting changes in the mechanical properties of ferroelectric materials as a function of the direction of the ferroelectric polarization. In this work, we calculate the asymmetry in the Young's modulus found in oppositely polarized out-of-plane domains of BaTiO single crystals by means of contact resonance AFM, and we evaluate its impact on the electromechanical response as measured by piezoresponse force microscopy, both using band excitation modes. We analyze the electromechanical response of the different BaTiO domains using k-means to build up their mean elastic and electromechanical features and quantify the flexoelectrically induced modulation of the Young's modulus.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!