Low‐contents/absence of non‐electrochemical activity binders, conductive additives, and current collectors are a concern for improving lithium‐ion batteries' fast charging/discharging performance and developing free‐standing electrodes in the aspects of flexible/wearable electronic devices. Herein, a simple yet powerful fabricating method for the massive production of mono‐dispersed ultra‐long single‐walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) in N‐methyl‐2‐pyrrolidone solution, benefiting from the electrostatic dipole interaction and steric hindrance of dispersant molecules, is reported. These SWCNTs form a highly efficient conductive network to firmly fix LiFePO4 (LFP) particles in the electrode at low contents of 0.5 wt% as conductive additives. The binder‐free LFP/SWCNT cathode delivers a superior rate capacity of 161.5 mAh g−1 at 0.5 C and 130.2 mAh g−1 at 5 C, with a high‐rate capacity retention of 87.4% after 200 cycles at 2 C. The self‐supporting LFP/SWCNT cathode shows excellent mechanical properties, which can withstand at least 7.2 MPa stress and 5% strain, allowing the fabrication of high mass loading electrodes with thicknesses up to 39.1 mg cm−2. Such self‐supporting electrodes display conductivities up to 1197 S m−1 and low charge‐transfer resistance of 40.53 Ω, allowing fast charge delivery and enabling near‐theoretical specific capacities.
Anderson localization of phonons is a kind of phonon wave effect, which has been proved to occur in many structures with disorders. In this work, we introduced aperiodicity to Boron nitride/carbon nanotube superlattices (BN/C NT SLs), and used molecular dynamics to calculate the thermal conductivity and the phonon transmission spectrum of the models. The existence of phonon Anderson localization is proved in this quasi one-dimensional structure by analyzing the phonon transmission spectra. Moreover, we introduced interfacial mixing to the aperiodic BN/C NT SLs and found that the coexistence of the two disorder entities (aperiodicity and interfacial mixing) can further decrease the thermal conductivity. In addition, we also showed that anharmonicity can destroy phonon localization at high temperatures. This work provides a reference for designing thermoelectric materials with low thermal conductivity by taking advantage of phonon localization.
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