Design and Synthesis of Carbon Nano-Materials for Energy Conversion and Storage
Carbon, which has many allotropes, is one of the mostimportant materials for electrical devices.Ideal electrode materials must possess both high electricalconductivity and large accessible surface area. Graphite has highconductivity but very low surface area. In contrast, amorphouscarbon has a large surface area but low conductivity. Among allof these carbon materials, pristine graphene has the highestconductivity with large surface area. However, without asubstrate, graphene sheets can readhere into graphite to losesurface area or crumple three-dimensionally with damagingconductivity. Therefore, it is a challenging task to solve thecontradiction between high electrical conductivity and largesurface area for electrode materials.In the recent years, Prof. Hu’s group has designed several reactions to synthesize 3D graphene sheets and 3D porous alkali metals embedded carbon nanowalls, which possess both high conductivity and large accessible surface area.Furthermore, those novel carbon materials exhibited excellent performance for dye-sensitized solar cells, hybrid perovskite solar cells, supercapacitors, Na ion batteries, and fuel cells. Those findings will be discussed in this invited talk.