Emergence of MXene and MXene-Polymer Hybrid Membranes as Future- Environmental Remediation Strategies.

The continuous deterioration of the environment due to extensive industrialization and urbanization has raised the requirement to devise high-performance environmental remediation technologies. Membrane technologies, primarily based on conventional polymers, are the most commercialized air, water, solid, and radiation-based environmental remediation strategies. Low stability at high temperatures, swelling in organic contaminants, and poor selectivity are the fundamental issues associated with polymeric membranes restricting their scalable viability. Polymer-metal-carbides and nitrides (MXenes) hybrid membranes possess remarkable physicochemical attributes, including strong mechanical endurance, high mechanical flexibility, superior adsorptive behavior, and selective permeability, due to multi-interactions between polymers and MXene's surface functionalities. This review articulates the state-of-the-art MXene-polymer hybrid membranes, emphasizing its fabrication routes, enhanced physicochemical properties, and improved adsorptive behavior. It comprehensively summarizes the utilization of MXene-polymer hybrid membranes for environmental remediation applications, including water purification, desalination, ion-separation, gas separation and detection, containment adsorption, and electromagnetic and nuclear radiation shielding. Furthermore, the review highlights the associated bottlenecks of MXene-Polymer hybrid-membranes and its possible alternate solutions to meet industrial requirements. Discussed are opportunities and prospects related to MXene-polymer membrane to devise intelligent and next-generation environmental remediation strategies with the integration of modern age technologies of internet-of-things, artificial intelligence, machine-learning, 5G-communication and cloud-computing are elucidated.

Cobalt-manganese-zinc ternary phosphate for high performance supercapattery devices.

State of the art supercapatteries have received considerable attention for their significant electrochemical performance; however, electrode materials with enhanced charge storage capabilities are desired. Here, we report the synthesis of mixed metal phosphate nanomaterials with different concentrations via a sonochemical approach. Initially, binary metal phosphates based on zinc, cobalt, and manganese were synthesized. Then, the composition of zinc and cobalt was optimized in ternary metal phosphates. Scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction techniques were utilized to examine the surface morphology, elemental analysis and crystal structure of as-synthesized nanomaterials. The electrochemical characterizations were performed in a three cell configuration. Zn0.50Co00.50Mn(PO4)2 delivers the optimum performance with a specific capacity of 1022.52 C g-1 (specific capacitance of 1704.21 F g-1) at 1.2 A g-1. This optimized material was further engaged in an asymmetric device (supercapattery) as a positive electrode material to explore the real device performance. The supercapattery device was found to have an impressive specific energy of 45.45 W h kg-1 at 0.5 A g-1 and provide a remarkable specific power of 4250 W kg-1 at 5 A g-1 current density. The device exhibits excellent capacity preservation of 93% examined after 1500 charge discharge cycles. In addition, to scrutinize the supercapattery performance in terms of capacitive and diffusion controlled processes, a simulation approach was adopted. The real device comprises a capacitive contribution of 8.42% at 3 mV s-1 and 66.56% at 100 mV s-1. This novel progress in ternary metal phosphates results in a fine electrode material for high performance supercapattery applications.