There are increasing requirements worldwide for advanced separation materials with applications in environmental protection processes. Various mesoporous polymeric materials have been developed and they are considered as potential candidates. It is still challenging, however, to develop economically viable and durable separation materials from low-cost, mass-produced materials. Here we report the fabrication of a nanofibrous network structure from common polymers, based on a microphase separation technique from frozen polymer solutions. The resulting polymer nanofibre networks exhibit large free surface areas, exceeding 300 m(2) g(-1), as well as small pore radii as low as 1.9 nm. These mesoporous polymer materials are able to rapidly adsorb and desorb a large amount of carbon dioxide and are also capable of condensing organic vapours. Furthermore, the nanofibres made of engineering plastics with high glass transition temperatures over 200 °C exhibit surprisingly high, temperature-dependent adsorption of organic solvents from aqueous solution.
Two-dimensional atomically thick materials such as graphene and layered molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) have been studied as potential energy storage materials because of their high specific surface area, potential redox activity, and mechanical flexibility. However, because of the layered structure restacking and poor electrical conductivity, these materials are unable to attain their full potential. Composite electrodes made of a mixture of graphene and MoS2 have been shown to partially resolve these issues in the past, although their performance is still limited by inadequate mixing at the nanoscale. Herein, we report three composites via a simple ball-milling method and analyze supercapacitor electrodes. Compared with pristine graphene and MoS2, the composites showed high capacitance. The as-obtained MoS2@Graphene composite (1:9) possesses a high surface area and uniform dispersion of MoS2 on the graphene sheet. The MoS2@Graphene (1:9) composite electrode has a high specific capacitance of 248 F g-1 at 5 A g-1 in an electrochemical supercapacitor compared with the other two composites. Simultaneously, the flexible symmetric supercapacitor device prepared demonstrated superior flexibility and a long lifespan (93% capacitance retention after 8000 cycles) with no obvious changes in performance under different angles. In portable and wearable energy storage devices, the current experimental results will result in scalable, freestanding hybrid electrodes with improved, flexible, supercapacitive performance.
2 August 2019 in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces