The sustainability issues of efficient energy storage and water purification are of vital importance to the long-term future of the planet.Researchers from Zhejiang University have developed a new nanostructured graphene material with a tuneable surface texture which can be used to for enhanced water purification and energy storage applications.
Inspired by the hierarchical structures and microscopic surface textures of the dry-climate plantCallitris endlicheri,the graphene structures use capillary effects to transport and store water in a similar way,but at much smaller length scales.Typically,tuneable surfaces such as these,require chemical surface modifications;but thisNanoscale Horizonsarticle outlines a new method involving plasma-assisted growth of graphene ‘nano-flaps' covalently bonded to micro-sized vertical grapheme graphene wells (termed ‘Sub-μGW').The surfaces showed better water purification of metal nanoparticles from water and remarkable electrochemical performance in supercapacitors (2.5x higher specific capacitance of Sub-μGW electrodes).These excellent properties are attributed to enhanced solid-liquid interfacing leading to a super hydrophilic surface by reduction of air bubbles,and better device performance.
In the future,this biomimetic approach could be used to control the wettability of a range of porous microstructured surfaces,and could lead to further breakthroughs in important areas such as energy storage and conversion,water purification,and biomedical devices.
Read the article:
Tuneable fluidics within graphene nanogaps for water purification and energy storage
Zheng Bo,Yilei Tian,Zhao Jun Han,Shenghao Wu,Shuo Zhang,Jianhua Yan,Kefa Cena and Kostya Ostrikov
Nanoscale Horizons,2017,Advance Article,DOI: 10.1039/C6NH00167J
Alexander Cook is a guest web writer for the RSC journal blogs.He is a PhD researcher in the Perrier group at the University of Warwick,focusing on polymer materials and their use in various applications.Follow him on twitter @alexcook222