Low-Temperature, Universal Synthetic Route for Mesoporous Metal Oxides by Exploiting Synergistic Effect of Thermal Activation and Plasma

Abstract

Mesoporous metal oxides exhibit excellent physicochemical properties and are widely used in various fields, including energy storage/conversion, catalysis, and sensors. Although several soft-template approaches are reported, high-temperature calcination for both metal oxide formation and template removal is necessary, which limits direct synthesis on a plastic substrate for flexible devices. Here, a universal synthetic approach that combines thermal activation and oxygen plasma to synthesize diverse mesoporous metal oxides (V₂O₅, V₆O₁₃, TiO₂, Nb₂O₅, WO_3, and MoO₃) at low temperatures (150-200 °C), which can be applicable to a flexible polymeric substrate is introduced. As a demonstration, a flexible micro-supercapacitor is fabricated by directly synthesizing mesoporous V₂O₅ on an indium-tin oxide-coated colorless polyimide film. The energy storage performance is well maintained under severe bending conditions.

Keywords: block copolymer; flexible energy storage devices; low‐temperature processes; mesoporous materials; metal oxides; plasma.