Title: A New Type of Electrode Material—— Na-embedded Carbon Nanowalls and Its Application for Energy

Speaker: Prof. Yunxing Hu

Date/Time: 16：00 PM, Dec. 21, 2017 (Thur.)

Location: Room 202, Lujiaxi Building

Abstract:

Although doping alkali metals into carbon materials was demonstrated to create highly conductive carbon materials in 1991, the dopants were located on the carbon surface and could be easily oxidized, leading to a great loss in conductivity. As an ideal material, alkali metal atoms must be completely surrounded by carbon atoms to form alkali-metal-embedded carbon material. Such a hypothetical material has not yet been successfully synthesized for 25 years. In this presentation, Prof. Hu will talk about his group’s recent success of synthesizing highly-conductive porous Na-embedded carbon nano-wall materials (with large accessible surface areas) using an invented reaction between liquid Na and CO gas. The novel material solves the critical issue “the contradiction between high electrical conductivity and large accessible surface area” in current electrode materials. Furthermore, the synthesized material was demonstrated as an excellent electrode for (1) dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs), leading to high power conversion efficiency up to 11.03% and (2) supercapacitors, resulting in very high areal capacitance of 1.14 F/cm2.