Anisotropic Black Phosphorene Structural Modulation for Thermal Storage and Solar‐Thermal Conversion

Abstract

Exploiting novel strategies for simultaneously harvesting ubiquitous, renewable, and easily accessible solar energy based on the photothermal effect, and efficiently storing the acquired thermal energy plays a vital role in revolutionizing the current fossil fuel‐dominating energy structure. Developing black phosphorene‐based phase‐change composites with optimized photothermal conversion efficiencyand high latent heat is the most promising way to achieve efficient solar energy harvesting and rapid thermal energy storage. However, exfoliating high‐quality black phosphorene nanosheets remains challenging, Furthermore, an efficient strategy that can construct the aligned black phosphorene frameworks to maximize thermal conductivity enhancement is still lacking. Herein, high‐quality black phosphorene nanosheets are prepared by an optimized exfoliating strategy. Meanwhile, by regulating the temperature gradient during freeze‐casting, the framework consisting of shipshape aligned black phosphorene at long‐range is successfully fabricated, improving the thermal conductivity of the poly(ethylene glycol) matrix up to 1.81 W m−1 K−1 at 20 vol% black phosphorene loading. The framework also endows the composite with excellent phase‐change material encapsulation capacity and high latent heat of 103.91 J g−1. It is envisioned that the work advances the paradigm of contrasting frameworks with nanosheets toward controllable structure thermal enhancement of the composites.