Exceptionally large surface area and well-defined nanostructure are both critical in the field of nanoporous carbons for challenging energy and environmental issues. The pursuit of ultrahigh surface area while maintaining definite nanostructure remains a formidable challenge because extensive creation of pores will undoubtedly give rise to the damage of nanostructures, especially below 100 nm. Here we report that high surface area of up to 3,022 m2 g−1 can be achieved for hollow carbon nanospheres with an outer diameter of 69 nm by a simple carbonization procedure with carefully selected carbon precursors and carbonization conditions. The tailor-made pore structure of hollow carbon nanospheres enables target-oriented applications, as exemplified by their enhanced adsorption capability towards organic vapours, and electrochemical performances as electrodes for supercapacitors and sulphur host materials for lithium–sulphur batteries. The facile approach may open the doors for preparation of highly porous carbons with desired nanostructure for numerous applications.
The booming development of electronics, electric vehicles, and grid storage stations has led to a high demand for advanced energy‐storage devices (ESDs) and accompanied attention to their reliability under various circumstances. Self‐healing is the ability of an organism to repair damage and restore function through its own internal vitality. Inspired by this, brilliant designs have emerged in recent years using self‐healing materials to significantly improve the lifespan, durability, and safety of ESDs. Extrinsic and intrinsic self‐healing materials and their working principles are first introduced. Then, the application of self‐healing materials in ESDs according to their self‐healing chemistry, including hydrogen bonds, electrostatic interactions, and borate ester bonds, are described in detail. Based on these, critical challenges and important future directions of self‐healing ESDs are discussed.
Multifunctionalization of microporous polymers is highly desirable but remains a significant challenge, considering that the current microporous polymers are generally hydrophobic and nonresponsive to different environmental stimuli and difficult to be carbonized without damage of their well-defined nanomorphology. Herein, we demonstrate a facile and versatile method to fabricate water-dispersible, pH/temperature responsive and readily carbonizable hairy microporous polymeric nanospheres based on combination of the hyper-cross-linking chemistry with the surface-initiated atom transfer radical polymerization (SI-ATRP). The hyper-cross-linking creates a highly microporous core, whereas the SI-ATRP provides diverse functionalities by surface grafting of hairy functional blocks. The as-prepared materials present multifunctional properties, including sensitive response to pH/temperature, high adsorption capacity toward adsorbates from aqueous solution, and valuable transformation into well-defined microporous carbon nanospheres because of hybrid of carbonizable core and thermo-decomposable protection shell. We hope this strategy could promote the development of both functional microporous polymers and advanced hairy nanoparticles for multipurpose applications.
Lithium (Li) metal batteries have long been deemed as the representative high‐energy‐density energy storage systems due to the ultrahigh theoretical capacity and lowest electrochemical potential of Li metal anode. Unfortunately, the intractable dendritic Li deposition during cycling greatly restrains the large‐scale applications of Li metal anodes. Recent advances have been explored to address this issue, among which a specific class of electrolyte additives for electroplating is deeply impressive, as they are economic and pragmatic. Different from the conventional additives that construct solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) layer on anodes, they make dendrite‐free Li metal anodes feasible through altering Li plating behavior. In this research news article, the interlinked principles between industrial electroplating and Li deposition are firstly illustrated. The featured effects of electroplating additives on regulating Li plating morphology are also summarized and mainly divided into three categories: co‐deposition with Li cation, coordination with Li cation, and leveling effect of Li films. Furthermore, the mechanism exploration or derivative use of electroplating additive for dendrite suppression and potential research directions are proposed, with emphasizing that industrial electroplating might enable Li metal anode to scalable battery techniques and spread to metal battery systems beyond Li.
utilization areas including adsorption, separation, energy storage, catalysis, sensing, and medicine, [27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36] attributing to the large surface area and the well-orchestrated surface chemistry. Although great progress has been achieved for adsorbable porous materials, many factors still hinder the efficiency of environmental control such as the low adsorption speed in several minutes to hours in most cases. Therefore, not only high porosity but also good pore accessibility is significant in improving the adsorption performance. In addition to pursuing high adsorption performance, designing a pollutant-sensitive adsorbent is another area of interest that will greatly save the time of water analysis prior to the adsorption step. It is of great necessity to integrate the ultrafast pollutant sequestering ability with realtime visible detection to boost the performances of advanced adsorbent materials. Smart polymers, also known as responsive polymers, are able to respond to various environmental stimuli, including temperature, [37] pH, [38][39][40] light, [41][42][43] and ionic strength, [44,45] and thus reversibly alter their physicochemical properties. Smart polymers have been widely studied and applied in many areas such as environmental management, [4,46] sensor, [47,48] medical health, and others. [49][50][51] Recently, developing novel advanced polymers with multiple responses is of great practical importance and has become a research hotspot in the field of smart materials, [52][53][54][55][56] since the external environments are much more complex and the demands of practical applications are multileveled and diversified. Furthermore, the stereotypical smart polymers are usually "soft materials", such as micelles, vesicles, and hydrogels. This imperfection hinders the applications of smart polymers in many areas. For example, common smart polymers lack hyper-crosslinked polymeric frameworks and cannot achieve high surface areas or permanent nanoporosities in the dry state. Therefore, it is valuable yet challenging to design structure for smart materials that incorporate a carefully orchestrated rigid hyper-crosslinked component into their conventional soft polymeric frameworks.Herein, we report a new class of intelligent microporous polymeric adsorbent materials with multifunctions, including pH sensitivity, rapid fluorescent response, and superfast adsorption It remains a formidable challenge to construct advanced adsorbents with superb adsorption, environmental stimuli response, and real-time detection capability for efficiently treating contaminants from complex environmental systems. A novel class of an all-in-one microporous adsorbent that simultaneously has excellent environmental chemosensory responsivity, visual detectivity, superfast micropollutant adsorption, as well as easy regeneration is reported herein. The advanced microporous adsorbent discussed in this study presents a hairy nanospherical morphology composed of a hairy stimuli-responsive polymeric shell and a sh...
The fabrication of advanced hierarchical porous polymers with a unique 3D nanonetwork structure composed of functional core-microporous shell nanoparticles was reported based on the development of a simple and efficient hypercrosslinking-induced self-assembly strategy.
Functional nanonetwork-structured polymers with inbuilt poly(acrylic acid) linings for enhanced adsorption toward basic dyes and heavy metal ions were fabricated based on the union of SI-ATRP and hypercrosslinking.
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