Carbon-based nanomaterials have been widely used as catalysts or catalyst supports in the chemical industry or for energy or environmental applications due to their fascinating properties. High surface areas, tunable porosity, and functionalization are considered to be crucial to enhance the catalytic performance of carbon-based materials. Recently, the newly emerging metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) built from metal ions and polyfunctional organic ligands have proved to be promising self-sacrificing templates and precursors for preparing various carbon-based nanomaterials, benefiting from their high BET surface areas, abundant metal/organic species, large pore volumes, and extraordinary tunability of structures and compositions. In comparison with other carbon-based catalysts, MOF-derived carbon-based nanomaterials have great advantages in terms of tailorable morphologies and hierarchical porosity and easy functionalization with other heteroatoms and metal/metal oxides, which make them highly efficient as...

Development of MOF-Derived Carbon-Based Nanomaterials for Efficient Catalysis

Fogging occurs when moisture condensation takes the form of accumulated droplets with diameters larger than 190 nm or half of the shortest wavelength (380 nm) of visible light. This problem may be effectively addressed by changing the affinity of a material’s surface for water, which can be accomplished via two approaches: i) the superhydrophilic approach, with a water contact angle (CA) less than 5°, and ii) the superhydrophobic approach, with a water CA greater than 150°, and extremely low CA hysteresis. To date, all techniques reported belong to the former category, as they are intended for applications in optical transparent coatings. A well-known example is the use of photocatalytic TiO2 nanoparticle coatings that become superhydrophilic under UV irradiation. Very recently, a capillary effect was skillfully adopted to achieve superhydrophilic properties by constructing 3D nanoporous structures from layer-by-layer assembled nanoparticles. The key to these two “wet”-style antifogging strategies is for micrometer-sized fog drops to rapidly spread into a uniform thin film, which can prevent light scattering and reflection from nucleated droplets. Optical transparency is not an intrinsic property of antifogging coatings even though recently developed antifogging coatings are almost transparent, and the transparency could be achieved by further tuning the nanoparticle size and film thickness. To our knowledge, the antifogging coatings may also be applied to many fields that do not require optical transparency, including, for example, paints for inhibiting swelling and peeling issues and metal surfaces for preventing corrosion. These types of issues, which are caused by adsorption of moisture, are hard to solve by the superhydrophilic approach because of its inherently “wet” nature. Thus, a “dry”-style antifogging strategy, which consists of a novel superhydrophobic technique that can prevent moisture or microscale fog drops from nucleating on a surface, is desired. Recent bionic researches have revealed that the self-cleaning ability of lotus leaves and the striking ability of a water-strider’s legs to walk on water can be attributed to the ideal superhydrophobicity of their surfaces, induced by special microand nanostructures. To date, the biomimetic fabrication of superhydrophobic microand/or nanostructures has attracted considerable interest, and these types of materials can be used for such applications as self-cleaning coatings and stain-resistant textiles. Although a superhydrophobic technique inspired by lotus leaves is expected to be able to solve such fogging problems because the water droplets can not remain on the surface, there are no reports of such antifogging coatings. Very recently, researchers from General Motors have reported that the surfaces of lotus leaves become wet with moisture because the size of the fog drops are at the microscale—so small that they can be easily trapped in the interspaces among micropapillae. Thus, lotuslike surface microstructures are unsuitable for superhydrophobic antifogging coatings, and a new inspiration from nature is desired for solving this problem. In this communication, we report a novel, biological, superhydrophobic antifogging strategy. It was found that the compound eyes of the mosquito C. pipiens possess ideal superhydrophobic properties that provide an effective protective mechanism for maintaining clear vision in a humid habitat. Our research indicates that this unique property is attributed to the smart design of elaborate microand nanostructures: hexagonally non-close-packed (ncp) nipples at the nanoscale prevent microscale fog drops from condensing on the ommatidia surface, and hexagonally close-packed (hcp) ommatidia at the microscale could efficiently prevent fog drops from being trapped in the voids between the ommatidia. We also fabricated artificial compound eyes by using soft lithography and investigated the effects of microand nanostructures on the surface hydrophobicity. These findings could be used to develop novel superhydrophobic antifogging coatings in the near future. It is known that mosquitoes possess excellent vision, which they exploit to locate various resources such as mates, hosts, and resting sites in a watery and dim habitat. To better understand such remarkable abilities, we first investigated the interaction between moisture and the eye surface. An ultrasonic humidifier was used to regulate the relative humidity of the atmosphere and mimic a mist composed of numerous tiny water droplets with diameters less than 10 lm. As the fog was C O M M U N IC A IO N

The dry-style antifogging properties of mosquito compound eyes and artificial analogues prepared by soft lithography: a superhydrophobic state with high adhesive force

Carbon-based materials, as one of the most important electrode materials for supercapacitors, have attracted tremendous attention. At present, it is highly desirable but remains challenging to prepare one-dimensional carbon complex hollow nanomaterials for further improving the performance of supercapacitors. Herein, we report an effective strategy for the synthesis of hollow particle-based nitrogen-doped carbon nanofibers (HPCNFs-N). By embedding ultrafine zeolitic imidazolate framework (ZIF-8) nanoparticles into electrospun polyacrylonitrile (PAN), the as-prepared composite nanofibers are carbonized into hierarchical porous nanofibers composed of interconnected nitrogen-doped carbon hollow nanoparticles. Owing to its unique structural feature and the desirable chemical composition, the derived HPCNFs-N material exhibits much enhanced electrochemical properties as an electrode material for supercapacitors with remarkable specific capacitance at various current densities, high energy/power density and long cycling stability over 10 000 cycles.

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Designed formation of hollow particle-based nitrogen-doped carbon nanofibers for high-performance supercapacitors

Developing a low cost, highly active, durable cathode towards an oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is one of the high-priority research directions for commercialization of low-temperature polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). However, the electrochemical performance of PEMFCs is still hindered by the high cost and insufficient durability of the traditional Pt-based cathode catalysts. Under these circumstances, the search for efficient alternatives to replace Pt for constructing highly efficient nonprecious metal catalysts (NPMCs) has been growing intensively and has received great interest. Combining with the compositional effects, the accurate design of NPMCs with 3D porous nanostructures plays a significant role in further enhancing ORR performance. These 3D porous architectures are able to provide higher specific surface areas and larger pore volumes, not only maximizing the availability of electron transfer within the nanosized electrocatalyst surface area but also providing better mass transport of reactants to the electrocatalyst. In this Tutorial Review, we focus on the rational design and synthesis of different 3D porous carbon-based nanomaterials, such as heteroatom-doped carbon, metal–nitrogen–carbon nanostructures and a series of carbon/nonprecious metal-based hybrids. More importantly, their enhanced ORR performances are also demonstrated by virtue of their favorably porous morphologies and compositional effects. Finally, the future trends and perspectives for the highly efficient porous NPMCs regarding the material design are discussed, with an emphasis on substantial development of advanced carbon-based NPMCs for ORR in the near future.

Highly efficient nonprecious metal catalysts towards oxygen reduction reaction based on three-dimensional porous carbon nanostructures.

Currently, developing nonprecious-metal catalysts to replace Pt-based electrocatalysts in fuel cells has become a hot topic because the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) in fuel cells often requires platinum, a precious metal, as a catalyst, which is one of the major hurdles for commercialization of the fuel cells. Recently, the newly emerging metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have been widely used as self-sacrificed precursors/templates to fabricate heteroatom-doped porous carbons. Here, the recent progress of MOF-derived, heteroatom-doped porous carbon catalysts for ORR in fuel cells is systematically reviewed, and the synthesis strategies for using different MOF precursors to prepare heteroatom-doped porous carbon catalysts, including the direct carbonization of MOFs, MOF and heteroatom source mixture carbonization, and MOF-based composite carbonization are summarized. The emphasis is placed on the precursor design of MOF-derived metal-free catalysts and transition-metal-doped carbon catalysts because the MOF precursors often determine the microstructures of the derived porous carbon catalysts. The discussion provides a useful strategy for in situ synthesis of heteroatom-doped carbon ORR electrocatalysts by rationally designing MOF precursors. Due to the versatility of MOF structures, MOF-derived porous carbons not only provide chances to develop highly efficient ORR electrocatalysts, but also broaden the family of nanoporous carbons for applications in supercapacitors and batteries.

Recent Progress in MOF-Derived, Heteroatom-Doped Porous Carbons as Highly Efficient Electrocatalysts for Oxygen Reduction Reaction in Fuel Cells

Inverse opal structures are desirable for fuel cell electrodes, but application of such structures in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells is yet to be realised. Kim et al. report fabrication of a platinum catalyst layer with an inverse opal structure, and show improved fuel cell performance.

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Ordered macroporous platinum electrode and enhanced mass transfer in fuel cells using inverse opal structure.

Heteroatom-doped porous carbon materials have attracted much attention because of their extensive application in energy conversion and storage devices. Because the performance of fuel cells and the rate capability of supercapacitors depend significantly on multiple factors, such as electrical conductivity and transport rate of ions and reactants, designing these carbon-based materials to optimize performance factors is vital. In order to address these issues, alveoli that possess a hollow cavity where oxygen exchange can occur are synthesized, inspired by N-doped carbon materials with a high surface area and low transport resistance. By incorporating a dopamine coating on zeolitic imidazolate framework (ZIF), pore size is modified and electrical conducting pathways are constructed, resulting in changes to the reaction kinetics. These highly interconnected electron connection channels and proper pore sizes facilitate the diffusion of reactants and the conduction of electrons, leading to high activity of the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), which is comparable to Pt, and high rate performance in supercapacitors.

Alveoli‐Inspired Facile Transport Structure of N‐Doped Porous Carbon for Electrochemical Energy Applications

The production of multiscale architectures is of significant interest in materials science, and the integration of those structures could provide a breakthrough for various applications. Here we report a simple yet versatile strategy that allows for the LEGO-like integrations of microscale membranes by quantitatively controlling the oxygen inhibition effects of ultraviolet-curable materials, leading to multilevel multiscale architectures. The spatial control of oxygen concentration induces different curing contrasts in a resin allowing the selective imprinting and bonding at different sides of a membrane, which enables LEGO-like integration together with the multiscale pattern formation. Utilizing the method, the multilevel multiscale Nafion membranes are prepared and applied to polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell. Our multiscale membrane fuel cell demonstrates significant enhancement of performance while ensuring mechanical robustness. The performance enhancement is caused by the combined effect of the decrease of membrane resistance and the increase of the electrochemical active surface area.

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Multiplex lithography for multilevel multiscale architectures and its application to polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell

In spite of their high conversion efficiency and no emission of greenhouse gases, polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) suffer from prohibitively high cost and insufficient life-span of their core component system, the membrane electrode assembly (MEA). In this paper, we are proposing Ti foam as a promising alternative electrode material in the MEA. Indeed, it showed a current density of 462 mA cm(-2), being ca. 166% higher than that with the baseline Toray 060 gas diffusion layer (GDL) (278 mA cm(-2)) with 200 ccm oxygen supply at 0.7 V, when used as the anode GDL, because of its unique three-dimensional strut structure promoting highly efficient catalytic reactions. Furthermore, it exhibits superior corrosion resistance with almost no thickness and weight changes in the accelerated corrosion test, as opposed to considerable reductions in the weight and thickness of the conventional GDL. We believe that this paper suggests profound implications in the commercialization of PEMFCs, because the metallic Ti foam provides a longer-term reliability and chemical stability, which can reduce the loss of Pt catalyst and, hence, the cost of PEMFCs.

Minhyoung Kim

Papers

Ordered macroporous platinum electrode and enhanced mass transfer in fuel cells using inverse opal structure.

Alveoli‐Inspired Facile Transport Structure of N‐Doped Porous Carbon for Electrochemical Energy Applications

Multiplex lithography for multilevel multiscale architectures and its application to polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell

Next-generation polymer-electrolyte-membrane fuel cells using titanium foam as gas diffusion layer.

Ionic Resistance of a Cathode Catalyst Layer with Various Thicknesses by Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy for PEMFC