Rescaling metal molybdate nanostructures with biopolymer for energy storage having high capacitance with robust cycle stability

Hybrid capacitors can replace or complement batteries, while storing energy through ion adsorption and fast surface redox reactions. There is a growing demand in developing nanostructured materials as electrodes for hybrid systems that can enhance the specific capacitance by ion desolvation in the nanopores. Here, we demonstrate that rescaling the pore diameter with the aid of biopolymer at an optimal level during the synthesis of metal molybdate leads to high capacitance 124 F g^-1 giving robust capacitance retention of 80% over 2000 cycles for a constructed device (activated carbon vs. metal molybdate). The presence of biopolymer (l-glutamic acid) in the metal molybdate acts as a complexing agent of the metal ion while enhancing the mass transport and hence it's improved electrochemical performance. However, XPS and other elemental analyses illustrated no evidence for N doping but traces of other surface functional groups (i.e. C and O) could be present on the molybdate surface. The biopolymer synthetic approach has the advantage of yielding nanostructured material with a relatively narrow pore size distribution controlled by l-glutamic acid. This study will provide a generic route to rescale other metal molybdate, phosphate or oxide counterparts and be an added value to the database.

Mechanochemical Synthesis of 3d Transition-Metal-1,2,4-Triazole Complexes as Precursors for Microwave-Assisted and Thermal Conversion to Coordination Polymers with a High Influence on the Dielectric Properties

The complexes [MCl2 (TzH)4] (M=Mn (1), Fe (2); TzH=1,2,4-1H-triazole) and [ZnCl2 (TzH)2] (3) have been obtained by mechanochemical reactions of the corresponding divalent metal chloride and 1,2,4-1H-triazole. They were successfully used as precursors for the formation of coordination polymers either by a microwave-assisted reaction or by thermal conversion. For manganese, the conversion directly yielded 1∞ [MnCl2 TzH] (4), whereas for the iron-containing precursor, 1∞ [FeCl2 TzH] (6), was formed via the intermediate coordination polymer 1∞ [FeCl(TzH)2]Cl (5). For cobalt, the isotypic polymer 1∞ [CoCl(TzH)2]Cl (7) was obtained, but exclusively by a microwave-induced reaction directly from CoCl2 . The crystal structures were resolved from single crystals and powders. The dielectric properties were determined and revealed large differences in permittivity between the precursor complexes and the rigid chain-like coordination polymers. Whereas the monomeric complexes exhibit very different dielectric behaviour, depending on the transition metal, from "low-k" to "high-k" with the permittivity ranging from 4.3 to >100 for frequencies of up to 1000 Hz, the coordination polymers and complexes with strong intermolecular interactions are all close to "low-k" materials with very low dielectric constants up to 50 °C. Therefore, the conversion procedures can be used to deliberately influence the dielectric properties from complex to polymer and for different 3d transition-metal ions.