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