New paper published in Journal of Materials Chemistry A on the use of antimony for water desalination. This may sound, at first, like a contradiction when considering that Sb is not stable in water; yet, the use of a ceramic membrane and an organic electrolyte environment engulfing the antimony electrode allows the stable and high-performance removal of sodium via the antimony – sodium – alloying reaction.
New paper published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A on the use of metal sulfide / graphene electrodes for use in ionic liquid supercapacitors. This work was done in collaboration with colleagues from the Czech Republic (among others: Palacky University and University of Pardubice) and spearheaded by Aristides Bakandritsos and his Ph.D. student Smita V. Talande. We are grateful to be featured on the back cover.
New paper published in Carbon on the effect of pore geometry on hydrogen storage. This work was done in collaboration with several groups from UK, France, and Singapore and lead by the team from University of Bristol (Velaska Ting).
New paper published in Nature Communications on the ion transport in carbon nanopores. The charge storage kinetics (and discharge process) of ionic liquid supercapacitors can significantly be enhanced when employing non-conventional charge/discharge profiles – and: slower is faster! This work was done in collaboration with colleagues from Stuttgart (both MPI for Intelligent Systems and University of Stuttgart), Slavko Kondrat (Institute of Physical Chemistry, Poland), and Layla Mehdi (University of Liverpool, UK).
New paper published in Energy Technology on the benefits (and design considerations) of carbon onion / lithium titanate hybrid electrodes for advanced lithium-ion battery applications.
New paper published in Carbon on monitoring the thermally induced transition from sp3-hybridized into sp2-hybridized. This work was done in collaboration with the group of Bernd Smarsly (Justus Liebig Universität Gießen, Germany).
New paper published in Nature Communications on the energy storage mechanisms of iodide redox electrolytes. This work was done in collaboration with TU Graz (among others: Christian Prehal & Qamar Abbas).
New paper published in Advanced Science on the enhanced desalination performance of Ag-MXene hybrid electrode materials operated as an membrane desalination device. This work was done in collaboration with Jie Ma (Tongji University).
New paper published in Chemical Communications on the novel synthesis of MXene via ionic liquids. This process replaces the use of HF or LiF/HCl mixtures. The work was done in collaboration with Michael Naguib (Tulane University) and the Leibniz INP (Greifswald).
New review article published in Chemical Reviews on pseudocapacitors, their science, material perspectives, and applications. This work was done in collaboration with Veronica Augustyn (NC State University), Cheng Zhan (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), and De-en Jiang (University of California).
New article published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces with the title “Self-sustained visible-light-driven electrochemical redox desalination”. This work was highly collaborative, including T. D. Waite (UNSW Sidney), and as lead scientist Fuming Chen (South China Normal University).
New paper published in Nature Reviews Materials on electrochemical desalination for the removal of ions (ranging from removal of undesired ions to elemental recovery and advanced ion management). The paper was created in collaboration with Doron Aurbach (Bar-Ilan University), Jeyong Yoon (Seoul National University), and Xiao Su (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign).
New paper published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces on the use of MXene paired with activated carbon for electrochemical desalination. Probing low and high salinity levels, our work demonstrates the permselectivity of MXene and the synergetic added-value of MXene surface functional groups to boost the desalination performance.
New paper published in ACS Applied Energy Materials on the use of niobium carbide as a facile precursor for tailored niobium oxide / carbon hybrid electrode materials for high performance lithium-ion batteries. The work was done in collaboration with Saarland University (Guido Kickelbick), TU Darmstadt (Bastian J. M. Etzold), and the Leibniz Institute for Plasma Science and Technology.
New paper published in ChemSusChem on dual-zinc-ion desalination. The system consists of two zinc foils as redox electrodes with flowing ZnCl2 electrolyte; thereby, the system holds the promising of being continued to be developed for continuous operation. The work was done in collaboration with Fuming Chen (South China Normal University).
New paper published in Electrochemistry Communications on utilization of zinc air battery (ZAB) technology for innovative use as high performance desalination device. The resulting zinc air desalination (ZAD) unit is the first of a novel family of metal air battery desalination systems that show a very high desalination capacity.
New paper published in Journal of Materials Chemistry A on the vital role of the properties of carbon as the conductive additive in Sb-conversion sodium-ion batteries. The homogeneity, morphology, size, and other properties of the carbon additive enable (or defy) high electrochemical performance and stability.
New paper published in Sustainable Energy & Fuels on the expected permselectivity of sub-nanometer pores of activated carbon. This effect enables membrane-free use of carbon electrodes for seawater desalination even at high molar strength, such as presented by seawater. This complementary work brings together modeling from the group of Guang Feng (Huazhong University of Science and Technology) and experimental work from our team.
New paper published in ACS Nano on ionic structure transition within carbon nanopores that enhance the charge/discharge kinetics of electrical double-layer capacitors. Different from the traditional view that a smaller pore results in slower charging, a non-monotonic relation is found between the charging rate and pore size, in which the charging process is accelerated in some sub-1-nm pores. This work was done in collaboration with Guang Feng (Huazhong University of Science and Technology) and Yury Gogotsi (Drexel University).
New paper published in Electrochimica Acta on the influence and best-choice of electrolytes (organic / ionic liquid) when using hybrid supercapacitors operated at 2.8 V. The datae xplore below-ambient and above-ambient temperatures and demonstrates 3-methoxypropionitrile and mixed organic electrolytes as promising ones for specific performance regimes.