Hydrogen-substituted graphdiyne-assisted ultrafast sparking synthesis of metastable nanomaterials

Xueli Zheng; Xin Gao; Rafael A Vilá; Yue Jiang; Jingyang Wang; Rong Xu; Rui Zhang; Xin Xiao; Pu Zhang; Louisa C Greenburg; Yufei Yang; Huolin L Xin; Xiaolin Zheng; Yi Cui

doi:10.1038/s41565-022-01272-4

Hydrogen-substituted graphdiyne-assisted ultrafast sparking synthesis of metastable nanomaterials

Nat Nanotechnol. 2023 Feb;18(2):153-159. doi: 10.1038/s41565-022-01272-4. Epub 2022 Dec 30.

Authors

Xueli Zheng^#¹, Xin Gao^#¹, Rafael A Vilá¹, Yue Jiang², Jingyang Wang¹, Rong Xu¹, Rui Zhang³, Xin Xiao¹, Pu Zhang¹, Louisa C Greenburg¹, Yufei Yang¹, Huolin L Xin³, Xiaolin Zheng², Yi Cui^{4

5}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
² Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
³ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA.
⁴ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA. yicui@stanford.edu.
⁵ Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA, USA. yicui@stanford.edu.

^# Contributed equally.

PMID: 36585516
DOI: 10.1038/s41565-022-01272-4

Abstract

Metastable nanomaterials, such as single-atom and high-entropy systems, with exciting physical and chemical properties are increasingly important for next-generation technologies. Here, we developed a hydrogen-substituted graphdiyne-assisted ultrafast sparking synthesis (GAUSS) platform for the preparation of metastable nanomaterials. The GAUSS platform can reach an ultra-high reaction temperature of 3,286 K within 8 ms, a rate exceeding 10⁵ K s^-1. Controlling the composition and chemistry of the hydrogen-substituted graphdiyne aerogel framework, the reaction temperature can be tuned from 1,640 K to 3,286 K. We demonstrate the versatility of the GAUSS platform with the successful synthesis of single atoms, high-entropy alloys and high-entropy oxides. Electrochemical measurements and density functional theory show that single atoms synthesized by GAUSS enhance the lithium-sulfur redox reaction kinetics in all-solid-state lithium-sulfur batteries. Our design of the GAUSS platform offers a powerful way to synthesize a variety of metastable nanomaterials.

Abstract

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