Hybrid material design for energy applications: Impact of graphene and carbon nanotubes

Abstract

This article reviews the origin and progress of inorganic/nanocarbon hybrid material research in my Ph.D. career. Building chemical bonds between inorganic active materials and nanocarbon substrates is the key to controlled hybrid material synthesis that allows for controlling the size and morphology of the materials and enhancing electron transport within the electrodes. Our inorganic/nanocarbon hybrid materials manifest superior electrochemical performance for asymmetrical supercapacitors, ultrafast nickel-iron batteries, lithium ion batteries, lithium-sulfur batteries, and electrocatalysis of oxygen reduction and evolution reactions. X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) spectroscopy has been utilized to characterize the chemical bonding and charge transfer at the interface of inorganic nanocrystals and nanocarbon substrates. Probing the physical and chemical states of the hybrid materials under electrochemical reaction conditions is an important future direction in this area. © 2014 IUPAC and De Gruyter Berlin Boston.