Two-Dimensional Arrays of Transition Metal Nitride Nanocrystals

Xu Xiao; Hao Wang; Weizhai Bao; Patrick Urbankowski; Long Yang; Yao Yang; Kathleen Maleski; Linfan Cui; Simon J L Billinge; Guoxiu Wang; Yury Gogotsi

doi:10.1002/adma.201902393

Two-Dimensional Arrays of Transition Metal Nitride Nanocrystals

Adv Mater. 2019 Aug;31(33):e1902393. doi: 10.1002/adma.201902393. Epub 2019 Jun 25.

Authors

Xu Xiao¹, Hao Wang^{1

2}, Weizhai Bao^{1

3}, Patrick Urbankowski¹, Long Yang⁴, Yao Yang⁵, Kathleen Maleski¹, Linfan Cui¹, Simon J L Billinge^{4

6}, Guoxiu Wang³, Yury Gogotsi¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Materials Science and Engineering and A. J. Drexel Nanomaterials Institute, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA.
² Soochow Institute for Energy and Materials Innovations, College of Energy, Soochow University, Suzhou, 215006, China.
³ Centre for Clean Energy Technology, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
⁴ Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics, Columbia University, New York, NY, 10027, USA.
⁵ Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA.
⁶ Condensed Matter Physics and Materials Science Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, 11973, USA.

PMID: 31237381
DOI: 10.1002/adma.201902393

Abstract

The synthesis of low-dimensional transition metal nitride (TMN) nanomaterials is developing rapidly, as their fundamental properties, such as high electrical conductivity, lead to many important applications. However, TMN nanostructures synthesized by traditional strategies do not allow for maximum conductivity and accessibility of active sites simultaneously, which is a crucial factor for many applications in plasmonics, energy storage, sensing, and so on. Unique interconnected two-dimensional (2D) arrays of few-nanometer TMN nanocrystals not only having electronic conductivity in-plane, but also allowing transport of ions and electrolyte through the porous nanosheets, which are obtained by topochemical synthesis on the surface of a salt template, are reported. As a demonstration of their application in a lithium-sulfur battery, it is shown that 2D arrays of several nitrides can achieve a high initial capacity of >1000 mAh g^-1 at 0.2 C and only about 13% degradation over 1000 cycles at 1 C under a high areal sulfur loading (>5 mg cm^-2 ).

Keywords: Li-S batteries; nanocrystals; transition metal nitrides; two-dimensional materials.

Abstract

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