Laser-sculptured ultrathin transition metal carbide layers for energy storage and energy harvesting applications
Name
s41467-019-10999-z.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.63 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
c1a7381e5e65c698fdb87cfd375314f0
Author(s)
Zang, Xining
Jian, Cuiying
Zhu, Taishan
Fan, Zheng
Wang, Wanlin
Wei, Minsong
Li, Buxuan
Follmar Diaz, Mateo
Ashby, Paul
Lu, Zhengmao
Date Issued
2019
Journal
Nature Communications
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Version
Final published version
Abstract
© 2019, The Author(s). Ultrathin transition metal carbides with high capacity, high surface area, and high conductivity are a promising family of materials for applications from energy storage to catalysis. However, large-scale, cost-effective, and precursor-free methods to prepare ultrathin carbides are lacking. Here, we demonstrate a direct pattern method to manufacture ultrathin carbides (MoCx, WCx, and CoCx) on versatile substrates using a CO2 laser. The laser-sculptured polycrystalline carbides (macroporous, ~10–20 nm wall thickness, ~10 nm crystallinity) show high energy storage capability, hierarchical porous structure, and higher thermal resilience than MXenes and other laser-ablated carbon materials. A flexible supercapacitor made of MoCx demonstrates a wide temperature range (−50 to 300 °C). Furthermore, the sculptured microstructures endow the carbide network with enhanced visible light absorption, providing high solar energy harvesting efficiency (~72 %) for steam generation. The laser-based, scalable, resilient, and low-cost manufacturing process presents an approach for construction of carbides and their subsequent applications.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-10999-z
