Pseudocapacitive Contributions to Charge Storage in Highly Ordered Mesoporous Group V Transition Metal Oxides with Iso-Oriented Layered Nanocrystalline Domains

TLDR: It is demonstrated that these group V transition metal oxides can be readily produced with a high degree of crystallographic alignment on virtually any substrate in contrast to classical solution-phase epitaxy which requires the use of a single-crystalline substrate to achieve oriented crystal growth.

Abstract: Amphiphilic block copolymers are very attractive as templates to produce inorganic architectures with nanoscale periodicity because of their ability to form soft superstructures and to interact with inorganic materials. In this paper, we report the synthesis and electrochemical properties of highly ordered mesoporous T-Nb2O5, L-Ta2O5, and TaNbO5 solid solution thin films with iso-oriented layered nanocrystalline domains. These oxide materials were fabricated by coassembly of inorganic sol−gel reagents with a poly(ethylene-co-butylene)-b-poly(ethylene oxide) diblock copolymer, referred to as KLE. We establish that all materials employed here are highly crystalline and have an ordered cubic pore-solid architecture after thermal treatment. We also demonstrate that these group V transition metal oxides can be readily produced with a high degree of crystallographic alignment on virtually any substrate in contrast to classical solution-phase epitaxy which requires the use of a single-crystalline substrate to ac...