Nature‐Inspired Synthesis of Nanostructured Electrocatalysts through Mineralization of Calcium Carbonate

Abstract

Biomineralization is a biogenic process that produces elaborate inorganic and organic hybrid materials in nature. Inspired by the natural process, this study explored a new mineralization approach to create nanostructured CaCO films composed of amorphous CaCO hemispheres by using catechol-rich polydopamine (PDA) as a biomimetic mediator. The thus synthesized biomimetic CaCO was successfully transformed to nanostructured films of metal-oxide minerals, such as FeOOH, CoCO , NiCO , and MnOOH, through a simple procedure. The CaCO -templated metal-oxide minerals functioned as efficient electrocatalysts; a CaCO -templated cobalt phosphate (nanoCoPi) film exhibited high stability as a water-oxidation electrocatalyst with a current density of 1.5 mA cm . The nanostructure of nanoCoPi, consisting of individual nanoparticles (≈70 nm) and numerous internal pores (BET surface area: 3.17 m g ), facilitated an additional charge-transfer pathway from the electrode to individual active sites of the catalyst. This work demonstrates a plausible strategy for facile and green synthesis of nanostructured electrocatalysts through biomimetic CaCO mineralization.

Bioinspired Mineralization under Freezing Conditions: An Approach to Fabricate Porous Carbons with Complicated Architecture and Superior K+ Storage Performance

“…Bioinspired mineralization (BM) is considered to be one powerful way to synthesize nanomaterials with controlled size, shape, and polymorph. − Different from natural biomineralization employed by complex living organisms, BM is a facile process by specific biomolecules to assemble inorganic substances into mineral matter. Nowadays, besides natural minerals such as silica, hydroxyapatite, and calcium carbonate, more nanomaterials including metal nanoparticles (Au, Gd) and metal oxides (TiO 2 , Fe 3 O 4 , ZnO) have been successfully prepared by the BM method, − constructing abundant sophisticated hierarchical nanoarchitectures. Of particularly interest, these hybrids derived from BM not only have similar porosity and hiearchical architectures with natural biomass, but also exhibit relatively uniform structures in a broad range.…”

One-Step Removal of Calcium, Magnesium, and Nickel in Desalination by Alcaligenes aquatilis via Biomineralization

“…Carbon, oxygen, calcium, and nickel were detected as main elements. In Figure 6a,b, the spectra for C 1s and Ni 2p3 in the precipitates represent carbonate compounds and NiCO 3 formed by the bioremediation [23].…”

Biomineralized Mesocrystal KCl Microreactor for Solid‐State Synthesis of Non‐Oxide Nanomaterials

“…[15][16][17] By assembling simple salts into biomolecule matrix, BM can create a number of hollow-closed structures with good uniformity and high order, showing the possibility of BM-derived preparing microreactors. [18,19] Meantime, this BM self-assembly process can be performed under mild conditions, which is not only easy to control but also environment friendly and cost effectively. Interestingly, lots of natural biominerals (like bone, teeth, nacre, and sea urchin spines) are found to have the mesocrystal structure, which endows them with the rigid-flexible mechanical behavior and even good thermostability.…”