A battery electrode material includes: 1) primary particles formed of an electrochemically active material; and 2) a secondary particle defining multiple, discrete internal volumes, wherein the primary particles are disposed within respective ones of the internal volumes.

Recent advances in polymeric artificial SEI films are summarized to afford a deep understanding of Li ion plating/stripping behavior and present design principles of high-performance artificial SEI films in achieving stable Li metal electrodes.

Incorporated an active ingredient to attract lithium ions into the dendrite-suppressing layer. Pyridinic nitrogen of graphitic carbon nitride served as the lithium ion affinity center.

Composite polymer electrolyte with 3D cellulose/ceramic networks is successfully developed using natural cellulose fibers and lithium ion-conducting ceramic nanoparticles.

A solid polymer electrolyte with pendent carbonate on a hydrocarbon backbone has been designed and synthesized to overcome conductivity and electrochemical stability problems.

Guided and facilitated lithium ion transport along a spontaneously polarized and highly dielectric material.

Reported the design of a submicron zinc anode sealed with an ion-sieving coating that suppresses hydrogen evolution reaction.

Demonstrate electrotunable liquid sulfur microdroplets in an electrochemical cell.

NiCo2Se4 nanowires were uniformly grown on carbon fiber paper (CFP) for the first time.

NiCo2Se4 nanowires were uniformly grown on carbon fiber paper (CFP) for the first time.

A hybrid Li–air battery uses a protected lithium anode and a porous air cathode in an aqueous electrolyte, based on a 4-e oxygen reduction reaction/oxygen evolution reaction.

Developed a three-dimensional (3-D) electrochemical system that can significantly reduce the applied voltage and effectively degrade organic contaminants in low-ionic-strength wastewaters.

Report an in operando platform composed of dark‐field light microscopy and a transparent electrochemical cell to reveal the dynamics of polybromide formation in their native environment.

Highlight a simple defect engineering strategy that greatly increases the efficiency of PDS adsorption and activation by introducing oxygen vacancies into NiO to produce an electron-rich surface.

A novel composite polymer electrolyte supported by Li+‐containing SiO2 nanofibers is developed.

Present a novel strategy to improve this solid–solid interface problem and maintain good interfacial contact during battery cycling by introducing an adaptive buffer layer between the Li metal anode and solid polymer electrolyte.

In this review, we summarize the most recent advances, including 3D high surface area electrode structure, core/shell structure with surface coatings, and nanocomposites with highly conductive materials, in various strategies for improving zinc electrochemical performance.

An electron-microscopy-based bioimaging technology capable of localizing individual proteins and resolving protein–protein interactions with respect to cellular ultrastructure would provide important insights into the molecular biology of a cell.

Overcome the passivation and dissolution of Zn anode by modifying the anode with graphene oxide (Zn@GO) by a facile solution casting method.

Supercooled liquid sulfur microdroplets were directly generated from polysulfide electrochemical oxidation on various metal-containing electrodes.

We innovatively embedded uniform Li3VO4 onto a multilayered material, Ti3C2Tx MXene, by a sol–gel method.

Ion‐sieving carbon nanoshell coated ZnO nanoparticle anode is reported, synthesized in a scalable way with controllable shell thickness, to solve the problems of passivation and dissolution simultaneously.

Introduced a concept of manganese-hydrogen battery with Mn2+/MnO2 redox cathode paired with H+/H2 gas anode, which has a long life of 10,000 cycles and with potential for grid energy storage. Here we expand this concept by replacing Mn2+/MnO2 redox with a nickel-based cathode.

Report a ZnO@TiNxOy core/shell nanorod structure for deeply rechargeable Zn anodes.

Solve both problems of Zn anode passivation and dissolution simultaneously by designing a distinctive nanostructured zinc anode in which 100 nm ZnO nanoparticles are wrapped and segmented by graphene oxide (GO) sheets.

Ultrastrong reinforced composite polymer electrolyte (CPE) is successfully designed and fabricated by introducing a stiff mesoporous SiO2 aerogel as the backbone for a polymer‐based electrolyte.

Collected and analyzed six types of particle matter-10 and particle matter-2.5 particles from different sources using an in situ sampling approach.

Review surveys the recent development of several types of in situ and in operando microscopy and their utilization in studying batteries.

Report a nanoscale, pomegranate-structured Zn anode (Zn-pome) fabricated via a bottom-up microemulsion approach to overcome ZnO passivation and Zn(OH)42- dissolution.

Develop a new Cu3P nanowire-assisted copper mesh (Cu3PNW–Cu) electrode via an in situ growth followed by a phosphidation method and, for the first time, introduce the Cu3PNWs in the water purification process.

In this progress report, the focus is on the challenges and recent progress in the development of Si anodes for lithium‐ion battery, including initial Coulombic efficiency, areal capacity, and material cost, which call for more research effort and provide a bright prospect for the widespread applications of silicon anodes in the future lithium‐ion batteries.

In this Perspective, we highlight the most recent (2015–2017) examples across lithium, sodium and zinc battery chemistries, where nanoscale materials tailoring and design addresses the intrinsic problems and limitations at both the materials level and device level.

We show that the “solid-liquid” hybrid behavior of a dynamically cross-linked polymer enables its use as an excellent adaptive interfacial layer for Li metal anodes.

Research in materials science is contributing to progress towards a sustainable future based on clean energy generation, transmission and distribution, the storage of electrical and chemical energy, energy efficiency, and better energy management systems.

Report a convenient method of overcoming the capacity limit of conventional graphite anodes by reversibly plating and stripping Li metal within the internal space of massive artificial graphite particles.

We discuss in detail several key issues in batteries, such as electrode volume change, solid–electrolyte interphase formation, electron and ion transport, and electrode atom/molecule movement, and then analyse the advantages presented by nanomaterials design.

We developed high-efficiency (>99.5%) polyimide-nanofiber air filters for the high temperature PM2.5 removal..

Using in situ Raman microscopy to monitor the shift of the first-order Raman peak of Si, we were able to measure for the first time the lithiation-induced stress in Si nanoparticles.

A high-capacity stretchable graphitic carbon/Si foam electrode is enabled by a conformal self-healing elastic polymer coating.

Here we introduce a method to encapsulate Si microparticles (∼ 1–3 µm) using conformally synthesized cages of multilayered graphene.

Here we report a facile cathode prelithiation method that offers high prelithiation efficacy and good compatibility with existing lithium-ion battery technologies. We fabricate cathode additives consisting of nanoscale mixtures of transition metals and lithium oxide that are obtained by conversion reactions of metal oxide and lithium.

We first developed in situ scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) techniques to study the cathode material structural changes on delithiation.

We show a nanopurification process, which involves only simple and scalable ball milling and acid etching, to increase Si purity drastically.

 Here we successfully developed a surface modification method to enhance the stability of LixSi NPs by exploiting the reduction of 1-fluorodecane on the LixSi surface to form a continuous and dense coating through a reaction process similar to SEI formation.

Li15Si4, the only crystalline phase that forms during lithiation of the Si anode in lithium‐ion batteries, is found to undergo a structural transition to a new phase at 7 GPa.

Silicon nanoparticles with atomic layer deposited zinc oxide (ZnO) coating show significantly improved electrochemical performance mainly because of enhanced mechanical integrity and stablized interface.

Using in situ transmission electron microscopy (TEM) through a nanoscale half-cell battery, in combination with chemo-mechanical simulation, we explored the effect of thin (∼5 nm) alucone and Al2O3 coatings on the lithiation kinetics of Si nanowires (SiNWs).

We demonstrate a novel electrode design by placing a three-dimensional (3D) oxidized polyacrylonitrile nanofiber network on top of the current collector.

This chapter surveys nanocarbon hybrids with silicon, sulfur, or paper/textile for high‐energy LIBs.

We first report that ceramic nanowire fillers can facilitate formation of such ionic conduction networks in polymer-based solid electrolyte to enhance its ionic conductivity by three orders of magnitude.

We design a nonfilling carbon-coated porous silicon microparticle (nC-pSiMP).

We introduce a transparent air filter for indoor air protection through windows that uses natural passive ventilation to effectively protect the indoor air quality.

We propose a mechanical approach for SC fabrication to address all the problems.

We present sodium manganese hexacyanomanganate (Na2MnII[MnII(CN)6]), an open-framework crystal structure material, as a viable positive electrode for sodium-ion batteries.

Here we report LixSi–Li2O core–shell nanoparticles as an excellent prelithiation reagent with high specific capacity to compensate the first-cycle capacity loss.

Using the conducting allotrope of phosphorus, “black phosphorus” as starting materials, here we fabricated composites of black phosphorus nanoparticle-graphite by mechanochemical reaction in a high energy mechanical milling process.

 We carry out in operando X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) studies on Ge anodes during the initial cycles to better understand these processes.

We will review how the rational design of nanostructured materials has addressed the challenges of batteries and electrochemical capacitors and led to high-performance electrochemical energy storage devices.

We propose a hierarchical structured silicon anode that tackles all three of these problems of structural degradation, the occurance of side reactions with the electrolyte and low volumetric capacity when the material size is reduced to a nanometre scale.

Dr. Nian Liu's PhD dissertation.

Using transmission X-ray microscopy the morphology and electron density changes in Ge anode particles are tracked during operation.

We report a newly developed manganese hexacyanomanganate open-framework anode that has the same crystal structure as the Prussian Blue open-framewerk crystal structure.

We demonstrate facile synthesis of Li2S–graphene oxide composites for use as high-capacity and stable-cycling Li2S cathodes.

Pure body-center-cubic structured metastable polycrystalline Li15Si4 was synthesized in a Li-ion battery by electrochemically lithiating a thin Si wafer.

We introduce a unique means of energy recovery from these reservoirs—a microbial battery (MB) consisting of an anode colonized by microorganisms and a reoxidizable solid-state cathode.

We report an innovative method that achieves high-efficiency water disinfection by introducing nanomaterial-assisted electroporation implemented by a conducting nanosponge filtration device.

Using a similar growth process reported in our previous study of MoS2 and MoSe2 films whose layers were oriented vertically on flat substrates, we demonstrate that the vertical layer orientation can be realized on curved and rough surfaces such as nanowires (NWs) and microfibers.

We show that crab shells with the unique Bouligand structure consisting of highly mineralized chitin-protein fibers can be used as biotemplates to fabricate hollow carbon nanofibers; these fibers can then be used to encapsulate sulfur and silicon to form cathodes and anodes for Li-ion batteries.

Here we report incorporation of a conducting polymer hydrogel into Si-based anodes: the hydrogel is polymerized in-situ, resulting in a well-connected three-dimensional network structure consisting of Si nanoparticles conformally coated by the conducting polymer.

Here we show that pure Si nanoparticles (SiNPs) can be derived directly from rice husks (RHs), an abundant agricultural byproduct produced at a rate of 1.2 × 10^8 tons/year, with a conversion yield as high as 5% by mass.

We present a scalable, room temperature, one-step, bottom-up approach to fabricate monodisperse polymer (polyvinylpyrrolidone)-encapsulated hollow sulfur nanospheres for sulfur cathode, allowing unprecedented control over electrode design from nanoscale to macroscale.

We fabricated flexible and conductive nanopaper aerogels with incorporated carbon nanotubes (CNT).

Here we report on a novel substrate, nanopaper, made of cellulose nanofibrils, an earth abundant material. Compared with regular paper substrates, nanopaper shows superior optical properties.

Here we report on a novel substrate, nanopaper, made of cellulose nanofibrils, an earth abundant material. Compared with regular paper substrates, nanopaper shows superior optical properties.

We report a scalable and versatile synthesis of multifunctional polyaniline (PAni) hydrogel with excellent electronic conductivity and electrochemical properties.

We use an X-ray transparent battery cell to perform in situ synchrotron X-ray diffraction on SiNWs in real time during electrochemical cycling.

We design and fabricate a yolk-shell structure to meet the needs of high capacity,  long cycle life, high efficiency, and the fabrication must be industrially scalable for silicone electrodes.

We report the first example of a MOF synthesized on surface-modified SiNWs. The synthesis of polycrystalline MOF-199 (also known as HKUST-1) on SiNWs was performed at room temperature using a step-by-step (SBS) approach, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and energy dispersive spectroscopy elemental mapping were used to characterize the material.

We engineered an empty space between Si nanoparticles by encapsulating them in hollow carbon tubes.

We show that a conductive polymer surface coating on the Si NWs improves cycling stability.

A high-performance microbial fuel cell (MFC) anode was constructed from inexpensive materials. Key components were a graphene–sponge (G–S) composite and a stainless-steel (SS) current collector.

We describe a carbon nanotube (CNT)–sponge composite prepared by coating a sponge with CNTs.

We describe a carbon nanotube (CNT)–sponge composite prepared by coating a sponge with CNTs.

We report a structure where MnO2 nanoflowers were conformally electrodeposited onto carbon nanotube (CNT)-enabled conductive textile fibers.

Here we report a core–shell TiC/C/Si inactive/active nanocomposite for Si anodes demonstrating high specific capacity and excellent electrochemical cycling.

We developed a “conductive wrapping” method to greatly improve the supercapacitor performance of graphene/MnO2-based nanostructured electrodes.

We present a method for prelithiating a silicon nanowire (SiNW) anode by a facile self-discharge mechanism.

We report a novel interconnected Si hollow nanosphere electrode that is capable of accommodating large volume changes without pulverization during cycling.

We report a novel interconnected Si hollow nanosphere electrode that is capable of accommodating large volume changes without pulverization during cycling.

We demonstrate a topological helix–coil transition between the internal and external helices to reveal the origin of the HH mesostructure and the relationship between the straight helical and HH rods.

A direct method to determine the pitch and chirality of complicated hierarchical helical mesostructures is presented by using the state-of-the-art electron tomography technique.

Our model is established by first reverting a helical rod with experimentally defined parameters to a conjectured straight rod without intrinsic pore channel twisting, and then quantitatively calculating the variation of two competitive energies as a function of twist angle in the torsion process starting from the reverted straight rod.

This requirement can be achieved by enhancing the surfactant−silanol interaction at the organic−inorganic interface through adjusting the hydrothermal treatment pH and adding acetic acid (HAc) during the synthesis.

This study systematically investigates periodic mesoporous organosilicas (PMOs) with controlled helical and concentric circular (CC) pore architectures prepared through a basic‐catalyzed sol–gel process by using an achiral cationic surfactant trimethyloctadecylammonium bromide (C18TAB) as a structure‐directing agent, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) as an additive, and 1,2‐bis(triethoxysilyl)ethane (BTEE) as a hybrid silica precursor.

The packing structures of macroporous ordered siliceous foams (MOSFs) are systematically investigated by using a 3D electron tomography technique and the nanostructural characteristics for layered MOSFs are resolved.

Siliceous vesicles with controllable sizes, wall thickness, and shapes have been successfully prepared by adjusting the hydrophilic/hydrophobic ratios of mixed block copolymer templates, which provides a feasible and designable approach to fabricate vesicular structures with controllable parameters that are important for their future applications.

The true internal structure of a complex concentric circular hexagonal mesostructure has been solved for the first time by using electron tomography. This technique allows the mesostructure containing closed rings to be differentiated from a closed helical mesostructure.