Robust, Superelastic Hard Carbon with In Situ Ultrafine Crystals

Abstract

Advancement in developing superelastic carbon aerogels is highly demanded in new industry sectors, particularly in wearable functional electronics for artificial intelligence applications. However, it is very challenging to increase the compressive strength and electrical conductivity while lowering the density of carbon aerogels. Here, an ultralight and superelastic hard carbon aerogel with in situ ultrafine carbon crystals is reported. Based on a novel precursor prepared from self‐assembling bacterial cellulose and thiourea molecules, the resulting aerogel possesses a unique cellular structure and simultaneously exhibits remarkable compressive and electrical properties with ultralow density in addition to excellent compressive cyclability. Specifically, the normalized compression strength and electrical conductivity are up to 20 and 10 times, respectively, of reported carbon aerogels. Armed with the compressed aerogel electrodes, the supercapacitor exhibits excellent electrochemical performance in areal capacitance, rate capability, and high‐power cyclic stability. Furthermore, the supercapacitor displays distinguished pressure‐response capacitive signal and excellent signal cyclicality. This study provides a unique carbon aerogel for advanced wearable monitoring and energy storage systems.

Hard Carbon Anodes: Fundamental Understanding and Commercial Perspectives for Na‐Ion Batteries beyond Li‐Ion and K‐Ion Counterparts

“…[17a] Very recently, Ding and Lu seperately presented the synthesis of superelastic HC aerogels with controllable material density and robust mechanical strength, which are promising as flexible and freestanding anodes for alkali metal-ion batteries. [66] Other HC with advanced structures and complicated compositions, such as N-doped defect-rich HC spheres (Figure 6d), [17b] P-doped HC nanofibers (Figure 6e), [61] O,S-codoped HC spheres (Figure 6f ), [55c] and HC/CNTs composites (Figure 6g), [62] have been synthesized from polymer-based precursors. These HC with heteroatom doping or composite materials will be discussed in detail later.…”

Mechanical force-assisted modulation of TiO2 nanowire-entangled hierarchical microstructures for photocatalysis application

“…36 Furthermore, the isotherms at high relative pressures (0.95 o P/P 0 o 1) are type II curves, suggesting the presence of macroporous structures. 22,37 Benefiting from the well-developed pore structures, TNW-600 and TNW-0 exhibit high specific surface areas of 184 and 144 m À2 g À1 , respectively. The pore size of both TNW-0 and TNW-600 shows a relatively wide distribution from mesopore to macropore.…”

Steered polymorphic nanodomains in TiO2 to boost visible-light photocatalytic oxidation

“…3g ), which is favorable for the electronic conduction and transfer in polymorphic structure. 63 Moreover, more nitrogen-containing functional groups are found in the carbonaceous structure of C 3 N 4 -induced TiO 2 , which is beneficial to amelioration of surface polarity. Accordingly, as shown in Fig.…”