Ultrarapid Nanomanufacturing of High-Quality Bimetallic Anode Library toward Stable Potassium-Ion Storage.

Bimetallic alloy nanomaterials are promising anode materials for potassium-ion batteries (KIBs) due to their high electrochemical performance. The most well-adopted fabrication method for bimetallic alloy nanomaterials is tube furnace annealing (TFA) synthesis, which can hardly satisfy the trade-off among granularity, dispersity and grain coarsening due to mutual constraints. Herein, we report a facile, scalable and ultrafast high-temperature radiation (HTR) method for the fabrication of a library of ultrafine bimetallic alloys with narrow size distribution (≈10-20 nm), uniform dispersion and high loading. The metal-anchor containing heteroatoms (i.e., O and N), ultrarapid heating/cooling rate (≈103  K s-1 ) and super-short heating duration (several seconds) synergistically contribute to the successful synthesis of small-sized alloy anodes. As a proof-of-concept demonstration, the as-prepared BiSb-HTR anode shows ultrahigh stability indicated by negligible degradation after 800 cycles. The in situ X-ray diffraction reveals the K+ storage mechanism of BiSb-HTR. This study can shed light on the new, rapid and scalable nanomanufacturing of high-quality bimetallic alloys toward extended applications of energy storage, energy conversion and electrocatalysis.

Ultrafast Non-Equilibrium Synthesis of Cathode Materials for Li-Ion Batteries.

The synthesis of cathode materials plays an important role in determining the production efficiency, cost, and performance of lithium-ion batteries. However, conventional synthesis methods always experience a slow heating rate and involve a complicated multistep reaction process and sluggish reaction dynamics, leading to high energy and long time consumption. Herein, a high-temperature shock (HTS) strategy is reported for the ultrafast synthesis of cathode materials in seconds. The HTS process experiences an ultrahigh heating rate, leading to a non-equilibrium reaction and fast reaction kinetics, and avoids high energy and long time consumption. Mainstream cathode materials (such as LiMn2 O4 , LiCoO2 , LiFePO4 , and Li-rich layered oxide/NiO heterostructured material) are successfully synthesized with pure phases, oxygen vacancies, ultrasmall particle sizes, and good electrochemical performance. The HTS process not only provides an efficient synthesis approach for cathode materials, but also can be extended beyond lithium-ion batteries.

Fabrication of CdTe QDs/BiOI-Promoted TiO2 Hollow Microspheres with Superior Photocatalytic Performance Under Simulated Sunlight.

Hollow and heterostructured architectures are recognized as an effective approach to improve photocatalytic performance. In this work, ternary TiO2/CdTe/BiOI with hollow structure was constructed via a step-by-step method. In addition, the effect of TiO2 structural regulation and the energy band alignment of BiOI and CdTe quantum dots (CdTe QDs) with TiO2 in TiO2/CdTe/BiOI on photocatalytic dye removal were also studied. The results reveal that the TiO2/CdTe/BiOI heterostructures with hollow substrates exhibit much higher photocatalytic activities than pure TiO2, P25, TiO2/CdTe, and TiO2/BiOI and ternary TiO2/CdTe/BiOI with solid substrates. For TiO2(H)/CdTe/BiOI, several synergistic factors may be responsible for the remarkable visible-light photodegradation performance, such as strong visible-light absorption by BiOI and larger specific surface area.