Advances on Emerging Materials for Flexible Supercapacitors: Current Trends and Beyond

The progressive size reduction of electronic components is experiencing bottlenecks in shrinking charge storage devices like batteries and supercapacitors, limiting their development into wearable and flexible zero-pollution technologies. The inherent long cycle life, rapid charge–discharge patterns, and power density of supercapacitors rank them superior over other energy storage devices. In the modern market of zero-pollution energy devices, currently the lightweight formula and shape adaptability are trending to meet the current requirement of wearables. Carbon nanomaterials have the potential to meet this demand, as they are the core of active electrode materials for supercapacitors and texturally tailored to demonstrate flexible and stretchable properties. With this perspective, the latest progress in novel materials from conventional carbons to recently developed and emerging nanomaterials toward lightweight stretchable active compounds for flexi-wearable supercapacitors is presented. In addition, the limitations and challenges in realizing wearable energy storage systems and integrating the future of nanomaterials for efficient wearable technology are provided. Moreover, future perspectives on economically viable materials for wearables are also discussed, which could motivate researchers to pursue fabrication of cheap and efficient flexible nanomaterials for energy storage and pave the way for enabling a wide-range of material-based applications

3D Nanoporous FeAl-KIT-5 with a cage type pore structure: a highly efficient and stable catalyst for hydroarylation of styrene and arylacetylenes

A novel bimetallic nanoporous FeAl-KIT-5 catalyst with a cage type porous structure and a high surface area has been prepared for the hydroarylation of styrene and arylacetylenes to afford 1,1-diarylalkanes and 1,1-diarylalkenes, respectively. The catalyst was found to be highly active, and selective, affording a high yield of substituted alkanes and alkenes. The catalyst also showed much higher activity as compared to those of other nanoporous catalysts such as AlSBA-15, AlKIT-5, and FeKIT-5, and can be reused several times without much loss of its activity

Immobilization of chiral amide derived from (1R,2S)-(-)-norephedrine over 3D nanoporous silica for the enantioselective addition of diethylzinc to aldehydes

Chiral amide synthesized from (1R,2S)-(-)-norephedrine has been successfully immobilized onto three dimensional Ia3d cubic nanoporous material. The immobilization of the chiral amide has been confirmed by using various physiochemical techniques. The immobilized ligand has been screened for its catalytic activity in the enantioselective addition of diethylzinc to aromatic aldehydes. The immobilized catalyst was found to be highly active and selective, affording the final product chiral alcohols in 92% yield with a 95% ee at room temperature. The enantioselectivity of the immobilized catalyst is much higher than that of the homogenous catalyst (40% ee) at room temperature. In addition, the catalyst was stable and found to be purely heterogeneous and recyclable. The activity of the immobilized catalyst has been also investigated for the aromatic aldehydes with different electron donating and withdrawing groups. In addition, the electronic and steric effects of the substrates affecting the activity and the enantioselectivity of the catalysts were discussed in detail

Microwave-assisted synthesis of highly crystalline mesoporous hydroxyapatite with a rod-shaped morphology

Mesoporous hydroxyapatite (MHA) with a rod-shaped morphology has been successfully synthesized for the first time employing cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) as a template and CaCl 2 and K 2HPO 4 as the precursors for hydroxyapatite under alkaline medium at the reaction temperature of 120°C via microwave method. The obtained material exhibits a disordered mesoporous structure with a high crystallinity and highly uniform rod-like morphology with an average size of ca. 25 nm in width and 100 nm in length

Recent Advances in Carbon‐Based Electrodes for Energy Storage and Conversion

Abstract Carbon‐based nanomaterials, including graphene, fullerenes, and carbon nanotubes, are attracting significant attention as promising materials for next‐generation energy storage and conversion applications. They possess unique physicochemical properties, such as structural stability and flexibility, high porosity, and tunable physicochemical features, which render them well suited in these hot research fields. Technological advances at atomic and electronic levels are crucial for developing more efficient and durable devices. This comprehensive review provides a state‐of‐the‐art overview of these advanced carbon‐based nanomaterials for various energy storage and conversion applications, focusing on supercapacitors, lithium as well as sodium‐ion batteries, and hydrogen evolution reactions. Particular emphasis is placed on the strategies employed to enhance performance through nonmetallic elemental doping of N, B, S, and P in either individual doping or codoping, as well as structural modifications such as the creation of defect sites, edge functionalization, and inter‐layer distance manipulation, aiming to provide the general guidelines for designing these devices by the above approaches to achieve optimal performance. Furthermore, this review delves into the challenges and future prospects for the advancement of carbon‐based electrodes in energy storage and conversion

Ordered Mesoporous C-70 with Highly Crystalline Pore Walls for Energy Applications

Mesoporous materials with carbon framework structure can offer distinctive functionalities with tunable electronic or catalytic properties. Many synthetic routes including hard or soft templating approaches are developed for the fabrication of various ordered mesoporous carbon based materials which have demonstrated unique catalytic and energy storage properties. So far, most of these techniques deliver only mesoporous carbon with amorphous wall structures which limit their performance in many applications. Fullerenes exhibit unique structure and significant properties including superconductivity, electrochemical stability, and heat resistance. Herein, for the first time, the preparation of highly ordered mesoporous fullerene C-70 materials with tunable porous structure and controlled rod-shaped morphology through the thermal oligomerization of fullerene C-70 molecules inside the mesopore channels of SBA-15 silica as a hard template with the help of chlorinated aromatics, wherein the solubility of fullerenes is high, is reported. It is demonstrated that these metal-free mesoporous fullerene C-70 framework with a high surface area and bimodal pores with multifunctionality exhibit excellent performance in the oxygen reduction reaction for fuel cells and supercapacitors. This simple strategy can also be extended to other fullerene nanostructures with different carbon atoms which can exhibit interesting physicochemical properties and find applications in catalysis and energy storage

Direct synthesis and characterization of highly ordered cobalt substituted KIT-5 with 3D nanocages for cyclohexene epoxidation

Highly ordered cobalt incorporated KIT-5 silica (Co-KIT-5) with different Co contents and a well-ordered three-dimensional cage type porous structure were prepared for the first time by using Pluronic F127 as structure directing agent at different molar water to hydrochloric acid (nHO/) ratio. The amount of Co content in the silica framework of KIT-5 can be finely controlled with a simple adjustment of the nHO/ ratio as it controls the concentration of the H ions in the synthesis gel. It has been found that the nHO/ ratio of 463 is the best condition to obtain Co-KIT-5 with a high Co content. The obtained materials were characterized by various techniques such as powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), N adsorption studies, field emission high resolution scanning electron microscopy (FE-HRSEM), high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), ultraviolet-visible diffused reflectance (UV-Vis DRS), electron spin resonance (ESR) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Characterization results revealed that Co atom can be introduced in the silica framework without affecting the structural order and the textural parameters of the samples. ESR, XPS and UV-Vis DR spectra confirmed that the Co atoms are indeed occupy the tetrahedral coordination with the silica framework of KIT-5. The catalytic performance of Co-KIT-5 with different Co contents in the cyclohexene epoxidation has been investigated using TBHP/HO as oxidants and acetonitrile as a solvent. Co-KIT-5 exhibited a high catalytic performance with TBHP as oxidant and remained inactive when HO was used. The effect of various reaction parameters such as reaction time, reaction temperature, and reactant feed ratio and oxidant, affecting the catalytic activity of Co-KIT-5 has also been studied. Among the catalysts studied, Co-KIT-5-0.90 was found to be the best catalyst, affording a high conversion of cyclohexene. In addition, the catalyst was found to be highly stable and can be reused several times without affecting its catalytic activity under the optimized reaction conditions

A nanoporous cytochrome c film with highly ordered porous structure for sensing of toxic vapors

Creating well-ordered nanoporosity in biomolecules promises stability and activity, offering access to an even wider range of application possibilities. Here, the preparation of nanoporous protein films containing cytochrome c protein molecules is reported through a soft-templating strategy using polystyrene (PS) spheres of different sizes as templates. The stability of the cytochrome c film is demonstrated through electrochemistry studies to show a reusable nature of these films over a long period of time. The size of the PS spheres is varied to tune the pore diameter and the thickness of the cytochrome c films, which are quite stable and highly selective for sensing toxic acidic vapors. The fusion of the templating strategy and the self-assembly of biomolecules may offer various possibilities by generating a new series of porous biomolecules including enzymes with different molecular weights and diameters, peptides, antibodies, and DNA with interesting catalytic, adsorption, sensing, and electronic properties