Grown Carbon Nanotubes on Electrospun Carbon Nanofibers as a 3D Carbon Nanomaterial for High Energy Storage Performance

High mechanical property and hydrophilic electrospun poly amidoxime/poly acrylonitrile composite nanofibrous mats for extraction uranium from seawater

Seawater reserves about 4.5 billion tons of uranium, if properly extracted, could be a sustainable green energy resource for hundreds of years, alternating its limited terrestrial ore and reducing the CO2 emitted from fossil fuels. The current seawater uranium adsorbents suffer neither economically viable nor adsorption efficiency, requiring more development to harvest satisfactorily uranium from seawater. Amidoxime-based fibrous adsorbents are the most promising adsorbents of seawater uranium due to abundant chelating sites. However, they suffer from severe shrinkage and stiffness once they dry, losing porous architecture and mechanical properties. Herein, an economical and scalable two-nozzle electrospinning technology was applied to produce poly amidoxime nanofibers (PAO NFs) supported by Poly acrylonitrile nanofibers (PAN NFs) as composite PAO/PAN nanofibrous mats with high structure stability. These PAO/PAN mats, with rapid wettability and excellent mechanical strength, show promising uranium adsorption capacities of 369.8 mg/g at seawater pH level, much higher than PAO and PAN NFs. The uranium adsorption capacity of the PAO/PAN mat reached 5.16 mg/g after 7 days of circulating (10 ppm uranium) spiked natural seawater. Importantly, the composite mat maintained its fibrous structure after five adsorption-desorption cycles with more than 80 % of its adsorption capacity, confirming its recyclability and stability. Therefore, the composite PAO/PAN mat fulfills the basic requirements for effectively and economically trapping uranium from seawater, which could be a matrix for further development.

Electrocatalysis in confined spaces: interplay between well-defined materials and the microenvironment

Catalysis in a confined space has attracted much attention due to the simultaneously designable nature of active sites and their microenvironment, leading to a broad spectrum of highly efficient chemical conversion schemes. Recent work has extended the scope of confined catalysis to electrochemical reactions. Mechanistic studies suggest that the confined environment in electrocatalysis can modulate mechanical, electronic, and geometric effects, stabilizing important charge-transfer intermediates and promoting reaction kinetics. In this minireview, we first discuss the fundamental concepts of confined catalysis by summarizing density functional theory (DFT) calculations and experimental investigations. We then present the rational design and applications of space-confined electrocatalysts with emphasis on the confined environment provided by carbon-based materials. We specifically focus on metal-based materials confined in carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and their applications in emerging electrochemical reactions including the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), water-splitting reactions, carbon dioxide reduction reaction (CO2RR), and nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR). Finally, the existing challenges, opportunities, and future directions of electrocatalysis in confined spaces are highlighted.

Advanced Anode Materials of Potassium Ion Batteries: from Zero Dimension to Three Dimensions

Potassium ion batteries (PIBs) with the prominent advantages of sufficient reserves and economical cost are attractive candidates of new rechargeable batteries for large-grid electrochemical energy storage systems (EESs). However, there are still some obstacles like large size of K⁺ to commercial PIBs applications. Therefore, rational structural design based on appropriate materials is essential to obtain practical PIBs anode with K⁺ accommodated and fast diffused. Nanostructural design has been considered as one of the effective strategies to solve these issues owing to unique physicochemical properties. Accordingly, quite a few recent anode materials with different dimensions in PIBs have been reported, mainly involving in carbon materials, metal-based chalcogenides (MCs), metal-based oxides (MOs), and alloying materials. Among these anodes, nanostructural carbon materials with shorter ionic transfer path are beneficial for decreasing the resistances of transportation. Besides, MCs, MOs, and alloying materials with nanostructures can effectively alleviate their stress changes. Herein, these materials are classified into 0D, 1D, 2D, and 3D. Particularly, the relationship between different dimensional structures and the corresponding electrochemical performances has been outlined. Meanwhile, some strategies are proposed to deal with the current disadvantages. Hope that the readers are enlightened from this review to carry out further experiments better.