Ultrathin 2D materials synthesized using a sacrificial metallo-hydrogel template
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strate the potential energy storage and energy harvesting capabilities of the ultrathin 2D TMCs, Lin and Grossman’s research group created flexible supercapacitors and solar-energy harvesting membranes using the lasersculpted metal carbides. The supercapacitor has an operating temperature range of –50°C to 300°C; high cyclability of over 10,000 cycles; and could be easily fabricated by direct patterning onto a polyimide substrate. The solar-energy harvesting membrane takes advantage of naturally forming, interconnected surfaces in the laser-sculpted carbides to improve light capture and steam production with up to 73% efficiency. The ability of both devices to operate in harsh environments (e.g., hightemperature or highly corrosive) where other structures might fail provides an additional rationale for the use of these ultrathin 2D TMCs in applications such as oil and gas separators in aircraft engines or temperature-insensitive energy-storage devices. This work represents a step forward to the large-scale, controllable synthesis of materials with unique 2D architectures, according to the research team. Gogotsi mentions that more research needs to be done to fully understand the synthesis–structure– property relationships of these metal carbides to precisely control the pore size and thickness and ultimately tune the materials properties. However, the ease and scalability of the laser ablation technique, according to the research team, offers a promising solution for more advanced materials fabrication, in competition with three-dimensional printing or additive manufacturing. “Laser-based materials design provides a new, innovative approach to design a wide range of high-performance materials, such as refractory oxides and carbides as well as high-entropy alloy materials with ultrahigh hardness,” says Xining Zang, first author of the work. The resulting materials can then be used for a variety of applications, with Lin’s group investigating the use of lasers for the design of carbonbased electrodes for stretchable devices and Grossman’s group focusing on using lasers to engineer natural carbonaceous materials for electronics and conductive membranes. Chris Cooper
• VOLUME BULLETIN 44 • OCTOBER 2019 • www.mrs.org/bulletin Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 5.189.202.227, on 11 Dec 2019 at 00:11:29, subjectMRS to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1557/mrs.2019.238
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